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DEC  8  1913 


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Some  By- Products 
of  Missions 

yBy 
ISAAC  TAYLOR  HEADLAND,  Ph.  D., 

Author  of  "  Court  Life  in  China,"  *'  China's  New  Day,'* 

"Chinese  Mother  Goose    Rhymes'*  **The  Chinese 

Boy  and  Girl,'"  "  The  Young  China 

Hunters"  etc.,  etc. 


DEC   8  1912 


«ip 


CINCINNATI :  JENNINGS  AND  GRAHAM 
NEW   YORK:    EATON  AND    MAINS 


COPYRIGHT,  1912, 
BY  JENNINGS  AND  GRAHAM. 


PREFACE 

Some  three  or  four  years  ago  I  began  speaking 
on  the  influence  of  missions  as  a  factor  in  the 
civilization  of  the  world,  holding  that  outside 
of  all  religious  considerations  missions  had 
justified  themselves  by  their  influence  in  the 
government,  the  education,  the  science,  the 
health,  the  wealth,  and  the  trade  of  the  world. 
Persons  who  were  interested  in  the  method  of 
the  presentation  of  the  subject  were  still  in- 
clined at  times  to  say,  ' '  But  this  is  not  mission 
work. ' ' 

I  was  willing  to  admit  that  it  was  not,  and 
yet  I  insisted  that  it  was  a  product  of  mission 
work.  In  traveling  about  the  country  I  was 
taken  to  visit  various  great  enterprises,  and 
was  shown  their  products,  but  was  told  that  a 
larger  proportion  of  their  income  was  a  result 
of  their  by-products  than  of  their  direct  prod- 
ucts, and  it  one  day  popped  into  my  head  that 
all  these  things  that  I  had  been  thinking  of  as 
the  products  of  missions  were  in  reality  but 

3 


4  PREFACE 

by-products.  The  products  of  missions  are  re- 
generated human  beings,  while  all  these  other 
things  are  simply  by-products,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  directly  or  indirectly,  the  result 
of  mission  work. 

There  are  those  of  my  friends  who  have 
thought  that  I  gave  the  gospel  too  much  credit 
for  our  Western — I  will  not  say  Christian — 
civilization.  That  it  is  the  result  of  Greek  and 
Eoman  pre-Christian  forces,  all  of  which  I  have 
considered  in  my  thinking,  and  have  accorded 
them  their  place;  but  I  believe  that,  after  all 
credit  is  given  to  all  other  influences,  it  is  still 
the  power  of  regeneration,  the  method  of  ob- 
taining which  Jesus  Christ  communicated  to 
His  followers,  that  best  accounts  for  it  all. 

I  have  called  the  book  ^^Some  By-products 
of  Missions ' '  because  I  have  only  touched  upon 
a  few  of  the  great  subjects  that  might  be 
treated  under  this  head.  Dr.  Barton,  from 
whom  I  have  quoted  in  several  of  my  chapters, 
published  a  few  months  ago  an  interesting  se- 
ries of  articles  in  the  Misisonary  Herald^  under 
the  title  *  *  By-Products  of  Foreign  Missions." 
In  these  he  treated  of  ''Industrial  Advance,'' 
*'New  Social  Order,"  ''Blunted  Sense  of  Ee- 


PREFACE  5 

sponsibility, "  *  *  Co-operation  and  Unity, ' ' 
*  *  Modern  Medicine  in  the  East, "  *  ^  A  New  Com- 
merce, ' '  ^  ^  Modem  Education, ' '  etc.,  all  of  which, 
and  many  others,  might  properly  be  taken  up 
under  this  head.  May  I  not  hope  that  many  of 
my  readers  will  take  up  other  lines  of  thought 
and  call  the  attention  of  the  people  to  the  di- 
rect as  well  as  the  indirect  influences  of  Chris- 
tianity in  the  development  of  all  phases  of  mod- 
em progress! 

I  make  no  apology  for  publishing  the  book, 
as  I  have  been  asked  by  the  publishers  to  write 
it,  and  repeatedly  urged  the  past  two  years  to 
put  my  thoughts  into  print.  The  chapters  as 
they  stand  were  given  to  the  theological  depart- 
ment of  Boston  University,  and  my  only  hope 
is  that  they  may  be  as  kindly  received  by  the 
public  as  they  were  by  the  students. 

I.  T.  H. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTIS 

I.  An  Age  of  By-Products,  .        .  .11 

II.  By-Products  in  Government,  .        15 

III.  By-Products  in  Trade,      .        .  .25 

IV.  By-Products  in  Science,        .  .        35 
V.  By-Products  in  Civilization,  .  .    47 

VI.  A  Genuine  Product,      ...  64 

VII.  By-Products  in  Civic  Life,      .  .    85 

VIII.  Lack  of  Christian  Influence,     .  96 

IX.  The  Religions  of  China,          .  .  107 

X.     By-Products   in    Intellectual  De- 
velopment, ....      123 

XI.    Need  of  Moral  and  Religious  Edu- 
cation,     135 

XII.    By-Products  in  Music,  .        .      158 

XIII.  By-Products  in  Art,  .        .        .171 

XIV.  By-Products  in  Reflex  Influence,  193 

XV.    The  Gospel  and  the  World's  Peace,  211 

7 


8  CONTENTS 


XVI.    By-Products  in  Individual  Devel- 
opment,   224 

XVII.    Products  and  By-Products,  .      243 

XVIII.    Products  and  By-Products,      .        .  260 

XIX.    By-Products  in  Exploration,       .      279 

XX.    By-Products  in  Language  and  Lit- 
erature,          301 

XXI.    By-Products  in  Non-Christian 

Systems,      .        .        ...      312 


Some  By-Products  of  Missions 


CHAPTEE  I 

AN  AGE  OF  BY-PRODUCTS 

The  present  is  an  age  of  by-products.  On  every 
hand,  instead  of  the  small  dealer  of  a  few  dec- 
ades past,  we  see  great  business  firms,  combi- 
nations, trusts,  utilizing  for  personal  wealth 
and  public  good  every  scrap  of  material  that 
was  formerly  thrown  away  as  worse  than  use- 
less by  private  individuals. 

I  recently  visited  a  great  sawmill.  I  found 
a  man  on  a  platform  on  the  riverside,  with  a 
long  pole,  tipped  with  a  hook,  in  his  hand,  with 
which  he  was  guiding  great  logs  to  an  inclined 
plane.  Here  they  were  caught  by  a  moving 
chain,  carried  to  the  second  story  of  the  build- 
ing, where  they  were  dumped  by  a  piece  of  ma- 
chinery onto  another  inclined  plane.  They 
rolled  down  to  a  truck,  where  they  were 
fastened  by  two  men  with  jacks,  and  were  shot 
back  and  forth  with  a  piston  past  a  belt-saw 
with  teeth  on  both  sides.  As  it  moved  forward, 
a  board  was  taken  off;  as  it  came  back,  an- 
other board  was  taken  otf ,  and  a  log  twenty  feet 

11 


12     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

long  and  twenty-one  inches  in  diameter  was 
sawed  into  boards  in  one  and  three-quarters  to 
two  minutes'  time. 

Every  scrap  of  wood  was  used  either  for 
lath,  for  slats,  for  scantling,  or  for  fuel,  while 
the  sawdust  was  made  into  wood-alcohol,  and 
the  exhaust  steam  was  carried  over  to  a  salt 
factory  next  door  and  made  to  run  machinery 
enough  to  enable  six  men  to  make  five  hundred 
barrels  of  salt  a  day  worth  ninety-five  cents  a 
barrel. 

The  Chinese  have  a  sawmill.  This  is  noth- 
ing more  nor  less  than  two  men,  a  file,  and  a 
big  buck-saw.  One  end  of  the  log  is  elevated 
by  placing  it  across  another  piece  of  timber, 
and  while  one  man  stands  on  the  log  the  other 
stands  beneath,  blinking  his  eyes  to  keep  the 
sawdust  out;  and  what  the  American  sawmill 
makes  into  boards  in  two  minutes  the  Chinese 
sawmill  does  in  from  two  to  three  days'  time. 

What  is  true  of  the  sawmill  is  equally  true 
of  the  packing  house.  I  was  in  Wichita,  Kan., 
recently.  The  mayor  of  the  city  said  to  me 
one  Saturday  morning: 

*'How  would  you  like  to  visit  the  Cudah^r 
packing  factory  this  afternoon  r* 


AN  AGE  OF  BY-PRODUCTS  13 

*  ^  Delighted, "  I  answered.  I  had  been  born 
on  a  farm,  and  I  remembered  distinctly  how, 
as  a  boy,  my  father  and  brothers,  with  a  neigh- 
bor or  two,  used  to  spend  one  day  preparing 
to  butcher.  The  next  day  they  killed  eight  or 
nine  hogs,  and  the  following  day  they  spent 
''cleaning  up.'' 

The  mayor  called  for  me  in  his  auto  about 
one  o'clock  Saturday  afternoon.  We  were 
taken  at  once  to  the  rear  of  the  factory,  where 
the  hogs  were  driven  into  a  little  pen.  A  man 
hooked  a  chain  to  one  leg  of  each  of  the  animals 
and  the  other  end  of  the  chain  to  a  large  wheel. 
With  the  revolving  of  the  wheel  the  hog  was 
raised  from  the  floor  and  dropped  from  the 
wheel  to  a  moving  trolley.  It  was  stuck  by  the 
first  man  it  came  to,  and  the  blood  was  caught 
and  used.  It  passed  through  a  boiling  vat,  was 
scraped  by  machinery,  and  the  hair  saved  and 
utilized. 

As  the  body  passed  along  the  line  of  men, 
about  thirty  in  all,  one  man  slit  it  down  the 
front;  another  disemboweled  it,  tossing  the  en- 
trails into  a  trough,  where  they  were  examined 
by  Government  inspectors  to  see  if  the  animal 
was  healthy.    A  third  man  took  off  the  head; 


14     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

a  fourth  slit  it  down  tlie  back;  a  fifth  cut  it  in 
halves  with  a  single  stroke  of  a  cleaver;  and 
when  it  reached  the  end  of  the  line  it  was  car- 
ried away  in  pieces  to  the  shelves.  Everything 
about  the  hog :  hoofs,  hair,  entrails,  blood,  even 
to  the  contents  of  the  stomach  and  bowels,  were 
used — everything,  I  was  told,  except  the  squeal ; 
and  there  were  men  there  with  moving-picture 
machines  and  phonographs,  catching  the  move- 
ments and  the  squeal,  which  they  proposed  to 
sell  in  their  nickelodeons.  And  I  was  assured 
the  largest  profits  of  the  packing  houses  come 
not  from  the  meat,  but  from  the  by-products. 
The  by-products  of  Standard  oil  are  greater 
and  more  numerous,  i3erliai3s,  than  of  any  other 
single  kind  of  business.  To  enumerate  them 
would  be  tiresome.  Among  them,  however, 
there  are  several  that  are  of  paramount  impor- 
tance. The  pipe-line,  as  a  method  of  transpor- 
tation, is  a  by-product  of  Standard  oil  from 
which  she  derives  one  of  her  largest  incomes. 
Analine  dies  are  another,  and  the  world  had 
to  wait  for  a  good  automobile  and  a  flying  ma- 
chine until  Standard  oil  produced  gasoline  in 
such  quantities  and  at  such  prices  as  would 
justify  its  use  as  fuel. 


CHAPTER  II 

BY-PRODUCTS  IN  GOVERNMENT 

In  the  last  chapter  of  Matthew,  the  last  three 
verses,  during  one  of  His  final  conversations 
with  His  disciples,  Jesus  Christ  says,  *^A11 
power  is  given  unto  Me  in  heaven  and  in  earth. " 
That  is  one  of  the  most  tremendous  claims  that 
any  living  being  could  make.  Moses  would  not 
have  dared  to  utter  such  a  sentence.  David 
could  not.  Paul  could  not.  Caesar,  Alexander, 
Napoleon  would  not  have  dared  to  make  a  state- 
ment of  that  kind — no  one  that  has  ever  lived 
but  Jesus  Christ  would  dare  to  say,  *  *  All  power 
is  given  unto  Me  in  heaven  and  in  earth.'' 

But  is  it  true?  That  is  a  fair  question.  As 
to  whether  all  power  in  heaven  is  given  unto 
Him  we  need  have  no  concern  here ;  we  propose 
to  confine  ourself  more  particularly  to  the  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  all  power  on  earth  is  given 
unto  Jesus  Christ. 

His  next  word  to  His  disciples  was  to  *'go 
:.:  ,.  .  and  teach  all  nations."  The  disciples 
went.    And  it  might  be  of  interest  to  those  who 

15 


16     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

have  the  time  and  disposition  to  do  so  to  find 
out  which  of  the  disciples  went  the  farthest.  If 
asked,  I  have  no  doubt  most  of  us  would  an- 
swer, Paul.  But  if  we  will  study  the  First 
Epistle  of  Peter  we  will  find  that  it  is  written 
to  the  Churches  scattered  throughout  Pontus, 
Galatia,  Capadocia,  Asia,  and  Bythnia; 
Churches  which  were  established  by  Paul  and 
Silas,  all  of  which  Peter  had  probably  visited 
with  Silas  and  Mark.  The  letter,  we  will  find 
by  referring  to  the  last  verses  of  the  book,  was 
written  from  Babylon  (or  Eome),  and  was  car- 
ried by  Sylvanus  (Silas).  We  find  Peter 
preaching  in  Samaria,  Lydda,  Joppa,  Caesarea, 
Antioch ;  and  Paul  tells  the  Corinthians  that  he 
could  lead  around  a  wife  or  a  sister  as  well  as 
Cephas  or  Barnabas — indicating  that  Peter 
had  been  at  Corinth.  Peter  was  probably  cru- 
cified at  Eome;  in  other  words,  we  find  Peter 
in  all  the  places  Paul  had  been. 

A  similar  study  of  the  Seven  Churches  to 
which  John  wrote,  together  with  his  banishment 
and  death,  will  show  that  John  was  almost  as 
great  a  traveler  as  Peter  and  Paul.  The  men 
who  heeded  this  command  to  the  letter,  and 
went   the  farthest,   are   the   greatest   of  the 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  GOVERNMENT       17 

Twelve.  They  are  not  greatest,  perhaps,  be- 
cause they  heeded  this  command,  but  because 
they  were  the  greatest  they  were  big  enough  to 
grasp  Jesus'  meaning. 

As  I  have  indicated  above,  the  disciples  went 
according  to  the  last  command  of  Jesus  Christ. 
They  went  to  Italy,  and  Italy  became  a  power. 
They  or  their  successors  in  mission  work  went 
on  to  Spain,  and  Spain  became  a  power.  They 
went  to  Portugal,  and  Portugal  became  a  power. 
And  Italy,  Spain,  and  Portugal  were  the  polit- 
ical powers  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  Eenais- 
sance.  It  was  they  who  discovered  China  and 
revealed  her  to  Europe.  It  was  they  who  also 
discovered  America  and  revealed  her  to  the 
world.  It  was  they  who  first  rounded  Cape 
Horn.  It  was  they  who  first  rounded  the  Cape 
of  Good  Hope;  indeed,  it  was  they  who  made 
the  first  tour  around  the  world. 

But  they  did  not  give  the  Bible  to  all  the 
people — they  gave  it  to  the  priests,  who  in  turn 
interpreted  it  to  the  people,  and  thus  they 
reached  a  certain  stage  of  development,  where 
they  stopped,  as  all  countries  have  done  that 
have  not  given  the  Bible  to  all  the  people,  mak- 
ing each  individual  responsible  both  to  God  and 


18     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

man  for  his  own  conduct.  "Witness  the  Eoman 
Catholic  countries  of  Europe,  of  South  Amer- 
ica, and  Mexico — not  one  of  them  stands  in  the 
front  rank  among  the  nations  of  the  world  as 
first-class  political  powers. 
^  Luther  went  down  to  Italy;  he  returned  to 
Germany,  translated  the  Bible  into  the  German 
language,  gave  it  to  all  the  German  people, 
and  Germany  became  a  power.  It  was  taken 
to  England,  given  to  all  the  English  people,  and 
England  became  a  power.  It  was  brought  over 
to  America,  placed  in  the  hands  of  all  the  Amer- 
ican people,  with  liberty  to  study  it  at  will,  and 
America  became  a  power;  and  Germany,  Eng- 
land, and  America  are  the  three  political  pow- 
ers of  the  world  to-day.  It  is  worthy  of  note 
too  that  England  and  America  are  giving  more 
than  six  times  as  much  toward  foreign  missions 
as  all  the  rest  of  the  Protestant  world  combined. 

All  political  power,  since  the  coming  of 
Jesus  Christ  into  the  world  and  the  establish- 
ment of  Christianity,  has  been  and  still  is  in 
the  hands  of  the  man  and  the  country  with  the 
Bible ;  and  hence  Jesus  Christ  might  have  said, 
All  political  power  is  given  unto  Me. 

I  realize  how  dangerous  it  is  to  attempt  to 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  GOVERNMENT       19 

give  in  so  few  sentences  a  summary  of  tke  po- 
litical power  of  the  world.  I  realize  that  there 
are  those  who,  not  being  Christians  themselves, 
will  recall  the  temporary  Mohammedan  upris- 
ing with  the  Moorish  supremacy  of  the  Dark 
Ages,  and  the  Mongol  invasion  of  Europe.  In 
spite  of  all  this,  however,  I  am  ready  to  risk 
the  statement  that  the  political  power  of  the 
world  as  it  stands  to-day  is  the  result  of  the 
gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  though  I  realize,  as  I 
shall  show  hereafter,  that  all  the  governments 
are  going  counter  to  that  gospel. 

It  may  be  urged  by  some  that,  while  such 
remarkable  transformations  might  have  been 
brought  about  in  the  political  conditions  of  the 
world  in  early  times,  they  would  be  impossible 
in  this  age.    To  all  such  I  answer: 

Fifty  years  ago  Japan  was  a  closed  land. 
I  am  not  disposed  to  deny  that  Japan  had  a 
civilization  of  her  own,  nor  am  I  disposed  to 
deny  that  among  a  people  of  her  own  kind  she 
had  a  certain  sort  of  political  power;  but  the 
ease  with  which  her  doors  were  opened  by  Com- 
modore Perry  is  the  best  evidence  that  it  was 
not  of  the  same  character  as  that  which  she 
wields  to-day. 


20     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Japan  had  had  Confucianism,  Buddhism, 
and  Shintoism  for  fifteen  hundred  years,  and 
she  slept;  but  with  fifty  years  of  the  preaching 
and  teaching  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  and 
the  introduction  of  the  by-products  of  that 
same  gospel,  Japan  is  awake  and  has  become 
a  power — and  such  a  power  that  the  nations  of 
Europe  dare  not  discuss  any  questions  concern- 
ing the  Orient  without  consulting  Japan. 

It  would  be  interesting  here  to  note  the 
progress  that  Japan  has  made  in  all  phases  of 
social,  political,  commercial,  and  educational 
life.  How  the  sexes  mingled  promiscuously 
naked  in  the  public  bath  and  in  the  home;  how 
the  government  almost  at  a  single  bound  leaped 
from  the  feudalism  of  the  Middle  Ages  to  the 
constitutional  monarchy  of  the  present  time; 
how  in  a  half  century,  from  a  few  junks  trading 
from  port  to  port,  or  with  China,  she  has  taken 
a  place  next  to  Great  Britain  as  a  sea-faring 
people,  and  with  great  banking  houses  and  com- 
mercial establishments  not  only  throughout  her 
own  empire,  but  throughout  the  world;  how 
from  an  inability  to  resist  ten  small  ships  under 
the  command  of  Commodore  Perry  she  has 
within  a  period  of  ten  years  destroyed  the  fleets 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  GOVERNMENT       21 

of  two  great  empires ;  how  her  army  has  been 
transformed  from  incompetent  soldiers  armed 
with  swords  and  pikes  and  chain  armor  of  the 
Middle  Ages  into  a  multitude  of  troops  that 
commanded  the  admiration  of  the  allied  armies 
of  the  world  during  the  Boxer  War,  and  whose 
mothers  ordered  them,  when  they  went  to  fight 
with  Russia,  to  come  back  either  a  victor  or  a 
corpse ;  and  how,  finally,  her  few  schools  teach- 
ing the  Confucian  classics  have  been  developed 
into  a  great  public-school  system,  with  high 
schools,  colleges,  and  universities  scattered 
throughout  the  whole  empire.  So  that  the  Jap- 
anese have  been  the  first  people  to  prove  that 
a  whole  nation  may  obtain  an  education  along 
new  lines  during  the  lifetime  of  a  single  indi- 
vidual. 

And  now  I  challenge  you  to  study  the  his- 
tory of  her  educational  development  and  see  if 
the  first  schools  were  not  established  by  the 
missionaries,  if  her  first  government  schools 
were  not  under  the  conduct  of  men  who  went 
to  Japan  as  missionaries,  and  if  the  first  schools 
established  by  educated  natives  were  not 
opened  as  Christian  schools  by  men  who  had 
been  assisted  by  Christian  people  abroad. 


22     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

If  there  are  those  who  are  disposed  to  insist 
that  trade  had  most  to  do  with  the  making  of 
the  new  Japan,  let  me  call  their  attention  to 
the  fact  that  Japan  had  been  trading  regularly 
with  the  Dutch  since  1611— three  hundred  years 
and  more.  And  these  Dutch  traders  had  been 
promised  by  the  Japanese  Shogun  that  *Hhey 
in  all  places,  countries  and  islands  under  mine 
obedience,  may  traffic  and  build  homes  service- 
able and  needful  for  their  trade  and  mer- 
chandises, where  they  may  trade  without  any 
hindrance  at  their  j)leasure,  as  well  in  time  to 
come  as  for  the  present,  so  that  no  man  may 
do  them  any  wrong.  And  I  will  maintain  and 
defend  them  as  mine  own  subjects."  They 
were  there  for  their  own  personal  and  private 
ends,  and  when  these  were  secured  they  were 
satisfied.  It  was  not  till  a  man  went  with  a 
free  Bible,  a  free  school,  and  a  free  and  efficient 
system  of  medicine  which  would  bring  relief 
from  pain,  with  the  object  of  doing  good  to 
the  people,  that  the  new  regime  was  brought 
about. 

Turn  now  to  the  greater  empire  of  China. 
One  hundred  years  ago  the  Protestant  gospel, 
which  represents  regeneration  and  a  free  Bible, 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  GOVERNMENT       23 

was  taken  to  the  Chinese.  China  had  had  Tao- 
ism for  twenty-four  hundred  years,  Confucian- 
ism twenty-three  hundred  years,  Buddhism 
eighteen  hundred  years,  and  Mohammedanism 
twelve  hundred  years,  and  she  made  but  tardy 
progress.  But  with  one  hundred  years  of  the 
teaching  and  preaching  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  the  circulation  of  a  free  Bible 
among  the  people,  China  is  awake  and  is  mak- 
ing more  rapid  progress  than  has  ever  been 
made  by  any  nation  of  similar  population  or 
dimensions  at  any  time  in  the  history  of  the 
world. 

When  I  went  to  China,  a  little  more  than 
twenty  years  ago,  there  was  just  one  school 
opened  by  the  Chinese  Government  teaching 
foreign  learning,  and  that  was  opened  and  pre- 
sided over  by  a  man  who  went  to  China  as  a 
missionary.  Dr.  W.  A.  P.  Martin,  though  there 
were  numerous  missionary  schools,  colleges, 
and  universities  scattered  throughout  the  em- 
pire. And  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  first 
six  colleges  and  universities  established  by  the 
Chinese  Government  were  opened  and  presided 
over  by  five  men  who  went  to  China  as  mis- 
sionaries: the  Tung  Wen  Kuan  and  the  Pe- 


^4    [SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

king  Imperial  University  by  Dr.  W.  A.  P.  Mar- 
tin, the  Tientsin  University  by  Dr.  C.  D.  Ten- 
ney,  the  Shantnng  University  by  Dr.  W.  M. 
Hayes,  the  Nan  Yang  College  by  Dr.  John  C. 
Ferguson,  and  the  Shansi  University  by  Dr. 
Timothy  Eiehards;  while  the  first  attempt  at 
a  public-school  system  was  also  established  by 
Dr.  Tenney  in  the  metropolitan  province  of 
Chihli,  and  a  scheme  for  a  similar  one  drawn 
Tip  for  the  Shantung  Province  by  Dr.  Hayes. 
One  school  teaching  foreign  learning  opened  by 
the  government  twenty  years  ago,  while  at  the 
present  time  there  are  more  than  forty  thou- 
sand schools,  colleges,  and  universities  opened 
by  the  Chinese  Government  and  engaged  in 
teaching  the  learning  of  the  West. 

All  political  power  has  been  given  to  Jesus 
Christ.  I  am  not  trying  to  interpret  the  pas- 
sage of  Scripture  with  which  I  began  this  chap- 
ter, but  such  is  the  verdict  of  the  world  nine- 
teen hundred  years  after  that  sentence  was  ut- 
tered by  the  Master. 


CHAPTER  III 

BY-PRODUCTS  IN  TRADE 

Last  winter  I  was  invited  to  deliver  a  lecture 

in  the  parlors  of  Mr.  B in  Riverdale  on 

the  Hudson.  You  know  it  is  a  lecture  when 
you  get  a  hundred  dollars  for  it,  a  talk  when 
you  give  it  at  a  missionary  meeting,  and  a  ser- 
mon when  you  preach  it  on  Sunday.  Well,  that 
was  a  lecture.     I  learned  that  evening  on  my 

way  to  Mr.  B 's  home  that  his  salary  is  the 

same  as  that  of  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  though  he  is  only  vice-president  of  a 
great  life  insurance  company.  I  learned  also 
that  if  Adam  had  put  $100,000  in  a  bank  the 
year  he  was  created,  and  had  continued  to  de- 
posit $100,000  a  year  every  year  from  that  time 
until  1912  without  getting  any  interest  on  it, 
he  would  not  have  as  much  money  in  the  bank 
to-day  as  this  insurance  company  has  assets. 
Wealth,  wealth,  wealth!  It  is  impossible  for 
me  to  say  how  many  millions  of  dollars  were 
represented  by  that  audience. 

25 


^6     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

At  the  close  of  the  lecture  Mr.  P ,  the 

partner  of  Mr.   M ,   came  up   and   shook 

hands  with  me  and  expressed  the  pleasure  he 
had  had  in  listening  to  what  I  had  to  say.  I 
was  told  that  evening  that  on  one  occasion  Mr. 

p went  down  to  see  Mr.   M .     They 

transacted  some  big  piece  of  business,  at  the 

conclusion  of  which  Mr.  M said,  ^^P , 

what  are  you  getting  a  year  now?'* 

*^0h,  I  'm  getting  a  fair  living.'' 

*^You  are  getting  $50,000  a  year;  are  you 
notr' 

'^Yes." 

**Well,  I  'm  reserving  this  desk  for  you." 

^^What  do  you  mean?" 

*^I  'm  reserving  this  desk  for  you  in  my 
office.  When  you  are  ready  to  come  and  take 
this  desk  I  have  $250,000  a  year  for  you." 

Mr.  P took  that  position,  and  gave  it 

up  a  year  later  for  something  bigger. 

"When  he  expressed  the  pleasure  he  had  had 
in  listening  to  what  I  had  said,  I  answered : 

*'Mr.  P ,  I  like  to  talk  to  men  who  are 

doing  big  things,  and  it  is  no  mere  compliment 
to  you  to  say  you  are  doing  big  things.  Have 
I  overstated  the  bigness  of  the  gospel  or  the 
importance  of  Christian  missions?" 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  TRADE  27 

' '  No ;  I  do  n  't  think  you  have, ' '  he  answered. 
^ '  Christian  missions  have  always  been  the  fore- 
runners of  trade. '^ 

There  is  your  business  man;  he  sees  mis- 
sions from  the  standpoint  of  trade;  and  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  the  missionary  is  the 
unsalaried  drummer  for  the  commerce  of  the 
world. 

*^But,  Mr.  P ,''  I  urged,  ^4s  not  trade 

itself  a  development  of  Christian  missions!" 

**What  do  you  mean?"  he  asked. 

'^Have  you  ever  seen  a  Chinese  junk  or  a 
Japanese  junk  or  a  Hindoo  junk  or  an  African 
junk  in  an  American  port?" 

**No;  I  do  not  think  I  have." 

''Well,  what  junks  are  carrying  the  trade 
of  the  world?" 

*  *  Why,  of  course,  the  vessels  made  in  Chris- 
tian countries." 

' '  What  men  have  developed  the  trade  of  the 
world?  Was  it  the  Chinese,  the  Japanese,  the 
Hindoos,  or  the  Africans?" 

'*No;  of  course  not.  It  was  the  men  in 
Christian  countries." 

**Now,  Mr.  P ,  how  do  you  explain  the 

fact  that  the  men  in  Christian  countries  devel- 
oped the  trade  of  the  world,  and  the  vessels 


28     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

made  in  Christian  countries  are  carrying  the 
trade  of  the  world,  if  it  is  not  first  or  last  a 
result  of  the  gospel  and  Christian  missions  T' 

**I  had  not  thought  of  it  in  that  way,'*  he 
answered.    *'It  does  look  as  if  it  were.^' 

*^ Another  thing,  Mr.  P ,''  I  continued; 

**God  says  that  Hhe  cattle  on  a  thousand  hills 
are  all  Mine,  the  silver  and  the  gold  is  all 
Mine.'  Now,  if  the  silver  and  gold  is  all  God's, 
the  coal  in  the  earth  is  God's  too." 

'*Yes,"  he  answered;  ^' there  is  no  violation 
of  logic  about  that." 

**Well,  I  come  from  Pennsylvania,  and  that 
State  is  underlaid  with  coal,  and  we  are  making 
scores  of  millionaires  from  the  coal  they  are 
taking  out  of  the  earth.  That  is  God's  coal  and 
God's  money. 

**Then,"  I  continued,  *'if  the  coal  in  the 
earth  is  God's,  the  gas — I  mean  the  natural  gas 
* — is  also  God's.  But  we  are  making  scores  of 
millionaires  from  the  natural  gas  they  are  tak- 
ing out  of  the  earth. 

**Then,  further,  if  the  coal  and  gas  are 
God's,  the  oil  in  the  earth  is  also  God's.  But, 
can  you  think  of  Standard  Oil  without  coupling 
it  in  your  thought  with  multi-millionaires!" 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  TRADE  29 

*^No,"  lie  answered;  **I  always  think  of 
Standard  Oil  and  multi-millionaires  at  the  same 
time.'' 

So  do  I;  don't  you! 

One  of  the  Standard  Oil  men  told  me  that 
when  they  first  began  taking  the  oil  out  of  the 
earth  there  were  people  who  complained  that 
they  had  no  right  to  do  so ;  that  God  had  hid- 
den this  oil  deep  down  in  the  earth  to  blow  up 
the  world  when  he  got  ready  to  do  so,  and  they 
were  robbing  God.  Now,  this  may  not  be  very 
good  reasoning  or  very  good  sense,  but  they 
tacitly  admit  that  it  is  God's  oil. 

I  often  go  to  the  Duquesne  Club,  when  I  am 
in  Pittsburgh,  for  my  luncheons  (one  man  had 
the  temerity  to  ask  me  at  a  laymen's  mission- 
ary convention  who  paid  for  those  luncheons). 
There  I  see  multi-millionaires  going  about  like 
so  many  school  boys — made  from  the  iron  they 
have  taken  out  of  the  earth. 

I  have  just  been  for  a  trip  up  through  Mon- 
tana, where  we  have  our  copper  kings;  and 
down  through  California,  where  we  have  our 
gold  kings ;  and  out  in  Colorado,  where  we  have 
our  silver  kings ;  and  then  in  South  Africa  we 
have  our  diamond  kings.    But  those  diamonds 


30     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

and  that  gold  and  silver  and  copper  and  iron 
and  coal  and  gas  and  oil  might  have  remained 
buried  deep  down  in  the  earth  for  another  mil- 
lion years  if  a  gospel-developed  man  had  not 
gone  to  take  them  out,  for  I  challenge  my  read- 
ers to  find  anywhere  in  the  world  a  single  mil- 
lionaire— not  to  say  multi-millionaire— made  in 
any  non-Christian  country  in  the  world  from 
any  of  those  things  which  God  hid  away  in  the 
earth  and  says  ^  ^  are  Mine. ' '  He  has  given  His 
wealth  to  the  man  to  whom  He  has  given  the 
gospel;  for  the  wealth  of  the  world  is  in  the 
hands  of  the  gospel-developed  man.  And  in  the 
light  of  the  twentieth  century  Jesus  Christ 
might  have  said,  ^^All  the  power  of  wealth  has 
been  given  unto  Me,  and  I  have  given  it  unto 
you." 

And  we  exclaim,  ^'AVhy,  0  Master,  hast 
Thou  given  it  unto  usT' 

And  we  seem  to  hear  His  answer  echoing 
down  through  the  centuries  in  the  form  of  His 
last  great  commission: 

*^Go,  teach  all  nations." 

*^Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the 
gospel  to  every  creature." 

**  Ye  shall  be  witnesses  unto  Me  to  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  earth." 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  TRADE  31 

I  have  given  yon  the  wealth;  I  have  given 
you  the  power;  I  have  given  yon  the  intelli- 
gence ;  I  have  given  yon  the  conveyances.    GO ! 

There  are  four  great  sources  of  wealth: 
mining,  agriculture,  stock-raising,  and  getting 
control  of  the  forces  of  nature;  and  I  think  I 
would  be  safe  in  challenging  my  readers  to  find 
a  single  millionaire  made  in  any  non-Christian 
country  from  any  one  of  these  four  sources. 
There  are  millionaires  in  China.  Li  Hung- 
chang  was  said  to  be  one;  but  his  money  was 
invested  in  pawn-shops,  and  his  wealth  was 
made  by  prejdng  on  the  poor.  There  are  mil- 
lionaires in  India ;  but  their  wealth,  as  in  China, 
will  be  found  to  be  the  result  of  taxation  of  the 
poor. 

When  Mr.  P said  that  ^*  Christian  mis- 
sions have  always  been  the  forerunners  of 
trade,''  I  could  not  but  feel  that  I  was  in  a 
position  to  give  him  pointers  on  missions  and 
trade. 

Wlien  I  went  to  China  twenty  years  ago 
we  could  not  get  a  bag  of  American  flour  in  all 
that  empire.  When  I  left  Peking  I  saw  piled 
up  on  the  bund  in  Tientsin  stacks  of  American 
flour  thirty  feet  high,  a  hundred  feet  deep,  and 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  along  the  bund,  and  I  said 


32     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS] 

to  myself,  ^^The  great  wheat-raisers  of  our 
Northwest  could  afford  to  pay  all  the  expenses 
of  all  the  missions  in  China — educational,  evan- 
gelistic, and  medical — for  the  business  that  has 
come  to  them."  Standard  Oil  could  afford  to 
do  the  same.  When  I  went  to  China  we  could 
not  get  a  can  of  oil  except  by  having  it  shipped 
from  San  Francisco  or  Chicago.  Now  Stand- 
ard Oil  is  the  light  of  Asia.  They  burn  it  in 
their  lamps ;  they  bum  it  in  their  small  stoves ; 
they  cook  their  food  with  it.  They  dip  their 
water  and  make  their  tea  and  wash  their  dishes 
and  sweep  up  their  dust  in  utensils  made  from 
Standard  Oil  tins.  Nay,  they  even  roof  their 
houses  with  Standard  Oil  tins;  indeed,  in  all 
kinds  of  domestic  uses  the  Standard  Oil  tin  ri- 
vals, and  in  many  cases  supplants,  the  omni- 
present bamboo. 

And  what  shall  we  say  of  the  Singer  sewing 
machine"?  That  company  will  testify  that  the 
first  sewing  machines  that  they  sent  to  the  non- 
Christian  world  were  carried  by  the  missiona- 
ries. The  natives  watched  them  with  open 
mouth  as  well  as  open  eyes.  They  began  buy- 
ing them  themselves,  and  now  we  see  their  ad- 
vertisements in  all  the  native  papers.    We  see 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  TRADE  33 

tliem  pasted  on  their  walls;  we  see  them  in 
their  shops  and  in  their  homes,  and  hear  them 
singing  as  we  pass  along  the  streets.  And  I 
can  not  look  at  the  tower  of  the  great  Singer 
Building  as  I  enter  the  harbor  at  New  York 
without  saying  to  myself,  ^'I  helped  to  build 
that  tower,''  for  I  was  one  of  the  unsalaried 
drummers  that  helped  to  open  up  one  of  the 
largest  markets  in  the  world  to  the  Singer  sew- 
ing machine. 

Men,  I  speak  to  you  now.  If  you  want  to 
talk  business,  the  biggest  investment  this  world 
has  is  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  has  done 
more  toward  the  development  of  man  and  more 
toward  the  development  of  the  world  than  any 
other  one  force.  And  next  to  the  gospel  is  the 
men  who  carry  the  gospel.  No  greater  mistake 
can  be  made  by  shortsighted,  narrow-minded, 
selfish  business  men  than  to  suppose  that  mis- 
sions interfere  with  business.  They  promote 
trade.  The  only  business  that  missions  would 
interfere  with,  if  they  could,  would  be  the  ship- 
ping of  such  intoxicants  as  injure  the  health 
and  character  of  the  natives.  And  the  time  will 
come,  if  it  is  not  even  now  upon  us,  when  every 
highminded  business  man  of  vision  and  fore- 

3 


34     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

sight  will  do  all  in  his  power  to  further  mis- 
sions, even  though  his  motive  be  nothing  higher 
than  to  promote  his  own  business. 

Indeed,  if  I  were  asked  to  state  what  would 
be  the  best  form  of  advertising  for  the  great 
American  Steel  Trust  or  Standard  Oil  or  the 
Baldwin  Locomotive  Works  (for  we  took 
twenty-seven  Baldwin  locomotives  out  of  the 
hold  of  one  steamer  in  China)  or  the  Singer 
sewing  machine,  or  any  one  of  a  dozen  other 
great  business  concerns,  I  should  say.  Take  up 
the  support  of  one  or  two  or  a  dozen  mission 
stations,  an  educational  institution,  a  hospital, 
a  dispensa,ry,  or  a  hundred  native  preachers  or 
teachers.  Every  one  thus  helped  would  be,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  a  drummer  for  your 
goods,  and  the  great  Church  they  represent  at 
home  would  be  your  advertising  agents. 


CHAPTER  IV 

BY-PEODUCTS  IN  SCIENCE. 

As  THE  missionaries  went  in  obedience  to  tlie 
last  command  of  the  Master  to  teach  all  na- 
tions, they  began  establishing  schools.  They 
were  monasteries  and  nunneries  in  old  Eoman 
Catholic  times :  they  are  colleges  and  universi- 
ties to-day ;  and  it  was  from  the  educational  ef- 
forts of  these  early  churchmen  that  have 
sprung  all  the  great  universities  of  early 
Europe. 

With  the  advent  of  Protestantism  the  mis- 
sionaries continued  to  go  and  to  teach,  and  Ox- 
ford and  Cambridge,  Harvard,  Yale  and  Prince- 
ton, and  a  multitude  of  other  colleges,  are  the 
result  of  gifts  from  men  who  were  stimulated 
with  the  thought  that,  ^^  religion,  morality,  and 
knowledge  being  necessary  to  good  government 
and  the  happiness  of  mankind,  schools  and  the 
means  of  education  shall  forever  be  encour- 
aged," an  ordinance  which  they  promulgated 
in  1787. 

They  began  taking  the  young  people  into 

35 


36     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

their  schools  and  teaching  them,  and  then  be- 
gan to  develop  a  new  power  in  the  world — the 
power  of  the  intellect,  the  power  of  the  reason, 
the  power  of  invention^  and  the  disposition  to 
experiment. 

These  young  people  seriously  undertook  the 
study  of  nature  and  her  laws.  They  soon  dis- 
covered some  of  the  powers  of  nature.  They 
then  began  making  their  thoughts  into  ma- 
chines (what  is  a  locomotive  or  a  trolley  car 
but  a  thought  made  into  a  machine,  with  a 
power  of  nature — the  expansive  power  of  water 
or  electricity— hitched  to  it?),  and  then  these 
powers  of  nature  pulled  them  over  land  and 
sea,  and  a  similar  power  swishes  them  through 
the  air. 

Scientists  tell  us  that  our  civilization  is  the 
result  of  our  science;  and  I  answer,  Yes, 
largely.  But  our  science  is  a  result  of  our  gos- 
pel; and  hence  all  our  civilization  is  only  a 
synonym  for  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ — a  by- 
product of  the  gospel.  Trace  this  thought  out 
to  a  last  analysis,  and  we  have  a  railroad  train, 
a  trolley  car,  a  telegraph,  a  telephone,  a  phono- 
graph, a  watch  in  your  pocket,  a  filling  in  your 
tooth,  glasses  on  your  eyes,  and  all  the  great 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  SCIENCE  37 

macliinery-filled  mills  which  it  has  required 
thought  to  produce,  and  thought  and  intelli- 
gence to  operate.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  we  would  have  had  any  of  these  things  to 
the  degree  we  have  them  now  but  for  the  inspi- 
ration and  intelligence  that  has  been  furnished 
by  the  gospel,  and  the  Church  and  schools  which 
are  the  embodiment  of  the  Word  of  God. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that,  while  the  non- 
Christian  peoples  studied  the  stars,  they  never 
made  an  astronomy.  I  know  what  the  ancient 
Greeks  did  in  astronomy ;  how  they  constructed 
a  theory  (the  Ptolemaic)  which  misled  the 
world  for  fifteen  hundred  years.  I  know  what 
Pythagoras  did,  and  how  nearly  he  came  to  the 
Copernican  explanation  of  the  solar  system; 
but  the  science  of  astronomy  as  it  stands  to-day 
has  been  made  by  the  Christian  peoples.  The 
Chinese  predicted  an  eclipse  more  than  seven 
hundred  years  B.  C,  and  many  of  the  facts  of 
astronomy  were  stumbled  upon  by  the  Oriental 
peoples.  They  have  written  books  upon  the 
stars  and  the  planets;  but  the  facts  of  astron- 
omy were  never  observed,  collected,  and  classi- 
fied in  anything  like  a  scientific  way  by  any  non- 
Christian  people. 


38     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

The  non-Christian  peoples  have  studied  the 
rocks;  but  they  have  never  made  a  geology. 
They  have  written  books  upon  rocks  and  pre- 
cious stones.  They  have  opened  mines  of  gold, 
silver,  copper,  iron,  and  indeed  all  kinds  of 
metals.  They  have  polished  diamonds,  rubies, 
jade,  and  all  kinds  of  precious  stones.  They 
have  worked  crystals  into  goblets  and  snuff- 
bottles  ;  but  the  classification  of  all  the  facts  of 
the  strata  of  the  earth  and  their  contents  was 
left  as  a  task  for  the  man  with  a  Bible. 

The  non-Christian  peoples  have  likewise 
studied  the  flowers ;  but  they  have  never  made 
a  botany.  They  have  written  thousands  of 
books  about  the  flowers ;  but  they  have  failed  to 
make  the  slightest  observation  as  to  their  struc- 
ture. One  day  while  engaged  in  translating  a 
botany  with  an  old  Chinese  graduate  scholar,  I 
mentioned  the  parts  of  the  flower,  to  which  we 
had  just  come  in  our  work. 

**  What  do  you  mean!''  he  asked. 

*'I  mean  the  structure  of  the  flower,  the 
regularity  or  irregularity  of  sepals,  petals, 
stamens,  and  pistils,"  I  explained. 

*'Wo  pu  ming  pai"  (I  do  not  understand), 
he  urged. 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  SCIENCE  39 

I  went  to  tlie  window,  pulled  two  or  three 
flowers,  and  pointed  out  what  I  meant. 

With  staring  eyes  and  month  agape  he  ejac- 
ulated : 

*'TFo  mei  lit  hui"  (I  never  observed  that). 

Again,  the  non-Christian  peoples  have  writ- 
ten books  upon  the  human  system;  but  they 
have  never  made  a  physiology,  a  science  of  med- 
icine, a  science  of  dentistry,  a  science  of  optics 
— nor,  indeed,  any  science.  Every  science,  nat- 
ural and  applied,  that  the  world  has  to-day,  has 
l)een  made  by  the  man  that  has  been  developed 
hy  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  Observe  that  I 
do  not  say:  by  a  man  who  believes  in  Jesus 
Christ  and  His  gospel.  There  are  many  men 
who  have  been  developed  in  Christian  schools, 
or  in  schools  originally  established  by  Christian 
men,  who  seem  to  think  it  an  evidence  of  big- 
ness or  broadness  to  focus  their  minds  upon 
an  cTTi,  and  try  to  pick  to  pieces  the  shell  from 
which  they  were  hatched.  There  are  many 
other  men  also — men  of  great  intellectual 
power  and  thought  and  of  correspondingly 
small  spiritual  power  and  faith — whose  time 
has  been  so  taken  up  in  the  development  of  their 
thinking  powers  and  their  observation  of  things 


40     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

that  they  have  had  no  time  for  the  cultivation 
of  their  moral  and  spiritual  faculties  and  the 
observation  and  classification  of  moral  and 
spiritual  facts  and  phenomena.  They  have  done 
much  for  the  advance  of  science ;  but  they  are 
the  product  of  a  Christian  civilization,  and  but 
for  the  gospel  and  the  educational  system  de- 
veloped by  the  man  with  the  Bible,  we  are  quite 
safe  in  saying  they  never  would  have  been. 

Observe,  further,  that  we  did  not  say  that 
all  scientific  facts  have  been  observed  by  the 
man  with  the  Bible.  This  would  not  be  true. 
All  the  great  peoples  who  have  established 
great  civilizations  of  ancient  or  modem  times 
have  been  familiar  with  some,  if  not  all,  of  the 
first  principles  of  physics — the  lever,  the  wheel 
and  axle,  the  inclined  plane,  the  pulley  or  the 
screw.  Without  these  the  Egyptians  could 
never  have  built  the  pyramids  or  erected  their 
great  temples,  tombs,  or  monuments.  Without 
some  observation  of  the  facts  of  astronomy 
they  would  not  have  erected  them  with  refer- 
ence to  the  points  of  the  compass  as  they  did. 
But  with  the  exception  of  the  ancient  Greeks 
and  the  Moors,  we  find  no  non-Christian  peo- 
ples classifying  their  observations  of  laws  or 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  SCIENCE  41 

things  in  anything  like  a  scientific  way.  The 
ancient  Greeks  approximated  this  in  euclid, 
astronomy,  and  logic,  and  the  Moors  made  con- 
siderable progress  in  mathematics  and  astron- 
omy; but  these  three  sciences,  with  all  other 
sciences,  stand  to-day  as  a  by-product  of  the 
civilization  developed  by  the  gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ. 

I  suppose  it  will  be  admitted  that  the  Chi- 
nese is  the  oldest  and  greatest  non-Christian 
civilization  that  the  world  has  ever  developed. 
It  has  risen  higher,  has  lasted  longer,  and  has 
exerted  a  wider  influence  over  more  men  and 
women  than  the  civilization  of  any  other  pagan 
people.  Moreover,  the  Chinese  are  a  very  prac- 
tical people,  having  stumbled  upon  the  mari- 
ner's compass  eleven  hundred  years  B.  C,  gun- 
powder some  two  hundred  years  B.  C,  the  prin- 
ciple used  in  the  pipe-organ  two  thousand  to 
three  thousand  years  B.  C,  printing  ^ve  hun- 
dred years  before  Guttenberg,  while  they  have 
made  for  themselves  all  the  practical  utensils 
of  life.  Their  alchemists  began  experimenting 
in  their  search  for  the  elixir  of  life  some  two 
or  three  centuries  before  the  Christian  era; 
some  of  them  had  an  explosion,  and  it  was  thus 


42     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

they  stumbled  upon  gunpowder.  But  while 
they  are  a  very  practical  people,  they  have 
never  made  an  ounce  of  good  gunpowder  dur- 
ing their  whole  history.  Although  they  discov- 
ered the  mariner's  compass  some  three  thou- 
sand years  ago,  they  have  never  made  a  good 
compass  up  to  the  present  time;  and  although 
they  antedated  Guttenberg  ^ve  hundred  years 
in  the  discovery  of  printing,  their  Peking  Ga- 
zette  was  both  the  oldest  and  worst-printed 
newspaper  in  the  world. 

These  alchemists  developed  a  system  of  sci- 
ence which  we  shall  have  occasion  to  mention 
further  on  in  speaking  of  the  Taoist  religion. 
Their  system,  however,  we  will  describe  here. 
It  is  called  Feng  Skua;  feng  meaning  wind,  and 
shua  meaning  water,  while  the  system  itself 
controls  or  explains  the  fortune  or  misfortune 
— in  a  word,  the  luck — of  all  places  and  people. 
The  scientists  are  the  soothsayers,  and  it  is  im- 
possible to  locate  a  house,  a  well,  a  city,  or  a 
cemetery  without  first  consulting  these  mouth- 
pieces of  nature.  Let  me  give  an  illustration 
or  two  which  will  do  more  to  make  Feng  shua 
clear  than  a  whole  volume  of  abstract  explana- 
tion. 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  SCIENCE  43 

There  is  at  Tiing-cliou,  fifteen  miles  east  of 
Peking,  a  pagoda  thirteen  stories  high,  weigh- 
ing an  indefinite  thousand  of  tons.  I  once  in- 
quired of  a  native  why  this  pagoda.  He  ex- 
plained that  formerly  in  that  locality  there  was 
a  shaking  of  the  earth.  A  soothsayer  was  con- 
sulted concerning  this  phenomena.  He  ex- 
plained that  in  that  locality  there  was  buried 
deep  down  in  the  earth  a  dragon,  and  that  every 
time  it  winked  its  eye  it  caused  a  shaking  of 
the  earth.  They  further  inquired  as  to  how 
to  get  rid  of  this  quaking  of  the  earth;  to  which 
he  answered,  ''Build  something  heavy  enough 
on  the  eye  of  the  dragon,  so  that  he  can  not 
wink;'*  and  my  friend  continued,  ''we  built  the 
pagoda,  and  he  has  never  winked  since.'' 

At  the  north  side  of  every  cemetery  there 
is  a  great  mound  of  earth,  unless  it  be  located 
with  reference  to  some  mountain-peak,  as  are 
some  west  of  Peking,  or  in  some  amphitheater 
of  a  mountain-chain  like  the  tombs  of  the  Ming 
dynasty  near  the  great  wall  north  of  Peking, 
to  protect  the  bodies  of  the  departed  from  the 
bleak  winds  of  the  north.  In  the  center  of  the 
capital  itself  is  a  great  mound,  or  hill,  made 
from  the  earth  secured  in  the  excavation  of  the 


44     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

artificial  lotus  lakes  of  tlie  Forbidden  City. 
This  mound,  called  Coal  Hill,  is  placed  imme- 
diately north  of  the  palace  buildings  for  the 
purpose  of  protecting  the  court.  An  elevation 
north  of  a  man's  house,  however,  is  as  liable 
to  bring  ill  as  to  protect  him,  as  was  well  illus- 
trated in  close  contiguity  to  our  mission  in  Pe- 
king. 

There  was  a  huang  tai  tze  (a  yellow  girdle 
man),  a  distant  relative  of  the  royal  family, 
lived  in  a  small  Chinese  house  just  across  the 
street  to  the  south  of  our  mission  compound 
in  Peking.  He  had  five  daughters  and  no  sons 
— a  calamity  in  a  Chinese  home,  where  a  girl 
can  do  nothing  toward  the  support  of  the  fam- 
ily, and  a  boy  is  necessary  to  the  perpetuation 
of  the  worship  of  the  ancestors.  This  worried 
the  old  man,  and  he  called  in  a  soothsayer  to 
inquire  the  cause  of  this  misfortune. 

The  soothsayer  went  all  about  the  premises, 
looking  wise  and  muttering  incoherent  and  un- 
intelligible formulas,  but  could  find  nothing 
that  would  account  for  the  condition.  The 
house  was  properly  located — if  it  had  not  been, 
some  other  soothsayer  would  have  been  at  fault. 
But  as  he  came  out  to  the  front  gate  and  looked 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  SCIENCE  45 

across  the  street,  he  discovered  that  we  had 
built  a  chimney  a  foot  and  half  above  the  top 
of  a  small  Chinese  house;  and  he  exclaimed,  **It 
is  that  foreign  devil's  chimney  that  has  spoiled 
the  feng  shua  of  your  place,  and  you  will  never 
have  anything  but  girls  as  long  as  that  chimney 
stands." 

The  old  man  donned  his  silk  garments  and 
his  hat — a  Chinese  never  wears  a  hat  except 
on  important  occasions— and  came  over  to  con- 
sult with  the  members  of  the  mission.  He 
talked  for  an  hour  about  everything  except  that 
which  concerned  him  most — a  Chinese  has  no 
idea  of  the  flight  of  time ;  tempus  does  not  fugit 
with  him — and  finally  came  to  our  chimney, 
how  it  had  spoiled  the  feng  shua  of  his  place, 
and  would  not  the  honorable  pastor  kindly  tear 
it  down  to  a  level  with  the  roof  of  the  house  and 
restore  the  luck  of  his  home. 

We  wanted  to  live  in  peace  and  harmony 
with  our  neighbors,  and  so  we  tore  the  chimney 
down  to  the  level  of  the  roof  of  the  house — and 
his  next  two  babies  were  boys.  That  is  science 
in  the  greatest  non-Christian  nation  the  world 
has  ever  developed.  We  must  admit  that  it 
worked — at  least  something  worked,  in  that 


46     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

case ;  but  how  would  you  like  to  be  governed  by 
that  style  of  thinking! 

Again  the  verdict  of  the  world  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  twentieth  century  is  that  all  sci- 
entific power  has  been  given  unto  Jesus  Christ. 


CHAPTEE  V 

BY-PEODUCTS  IN  CIVILIZATION 

I  WAS  talking  with  a  business  man  in  New  York 
recently  about  missions  and  the  Church,  and 
religious  affairs  in  general;  and  in  the  course 
of  the  conversation  he  ejaculated : 

*  ^  The  trouble  with  you  preachers,  Headland, 
is  that  you  don't  preach  a  practical  enough 
gospel.*' 

**What  do  you  mean?"  I  asked. 

*'Well,"  he  continued,  *'you  tell  us  about 
being  saved  some  time,  somewhere'* — 

** Pardon  me,"  I  interrupted;  ^*but  to  be 
saved  some  time,  somewhere,  will  be  the  most 
important  thing  in  time  or  in  eternity  to  you 
and  me.  It  will,  my  friend ;  I  happen  to  know 
that,  for  I  have  had  one  foot  in  the  grave  for 
the  space  of  two  months,  and  I  think  it  gives 
one  a  different  view  of  life  to  have  been  for 
eight  or  nine  weeks  in  sight  of  eternity." 

*'0h,  yes,  I  know  what  you  mean,"  he  con- 

47 


48     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

tinued;  ^^but  we  business  men  want  something 
that  takes  hold  right  now." 

*^We  have  it,"  I  answered. 

**What?"  he  inquired. 

**The  gospel." 

''What  do  you  mean?" 

''You  have  a  filling  in  your  tooth,"  I  an- 
swered. 

"Yes;  what  has  that  got  to  do  with  it?"  he 
asked. 

"Why,  your  tooth  is  saved  by  the  gospel," 
I  replied. 

"What  do  you  mean!"  he  asked,  with  some 
surprise. 

' '  I  mean  to  say, ' '  I  replied,  that  you  can  not 
find  a  dentist  anywhere  in  the  non-Christian 
world  that  can  fill  and  save  a  decaying  tooth. 
Now,  that  is  a  practical  enough  gospel,  is  n  't 
it?" 

"Is  that  true?"  he  asked. 

"It  is,"  I  replied;  and  then  I  continued, 
"Look  here;  do  you  pay  your  preacher,  when 
he  comes  to  see  you,  the  same  as  you  pay  your 
dentist  when  you  go  to  see  him?"  I  had  him 
there. 

"  No ;  of  course  I  do  not, ' '  he  answered. 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVILIZATION        49 

^^You  are  not  quite  honest,"  I  replied. 

*^Well,"  he  answered,  trying  to  excuse  him- 
self, *^you  see,  when  a  fellow  gets  a  toothache 
he  will  give  almost  anything  to  get  rid  of  it." 

And  I  answered,  ''0  God,  give  us  a  soul- 
ache,  a  heartache  for  the  world!"  That  is 
what  we  want.  We  are  so  concerned  about  our 
own  little  aches  and  pains,  and  our  own  com- 
forts and  luxuries,  that  we  forget,  if  we  ever 
knew,  the  great  throbbing,  pulsating  heart  of 
the  other  half,  or  the  dull,  blind  ache  of  the 
dark,  drear  millions  who  have  been  left  through 
all  these  centuries  without  any  knowledge  of 
that  great  big  gospel  that  brings  us  liberty, 
fraternity,  government,  educational  systems, 
knowledge,  science,  health ;  for,  I  continued : 

*^If  you  can  not  find  a  dentist  to  fill  a  de- 
caying tooth,  you  could  hardly  hope  to  find  a 
surgeon  who  could  set  a  broken  arm  or  limb, 
or  prescribe  intelligently  for  a  diseased  stom- 
ach or  a  system  of  aching  nerves." 

**Well,  scarcely,"  he  answered,  laconically. 

''You  will  be  interested  in  the  following 
story,"  I  continued:  ''One  of  the  court  painters 
came  to  me  one  day  in  Peking.  He  was  having 
trouble  with  his  throat.    I  inquired  about  the 


50     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

difficnlty,  and  lie  told  me  he  had  been  eating 
fish  in  the  palace  a  few  days  before,  and  had 
gotten  a  fishbone  stuck  in  his  throat. 

**  'Couldn't  any;  one  take  it  out  for  you?' 
I  inquired. 

*'  *No,'  he  answered,  *one  of  the  court  phy- 
sicians gave  me  medicine  to  dissolve  the  bone; 
but  it  did  not  dissolve.  I  wonder  if  one  of  your 
physicians  could  remove  it.' 

'*I  took  him  over  to  Dr.  Hopkins,  one  of 
God's  noblemen,  a  man  who  can  preach  and 
teach  as  well  as  heal,  who  lived  only  two  doors 
from  me.  The  doctor  had  him  sit  down  in  front 
of  the  window,  open  his  mouth;  he  looked  into 
his  throat,  saw  a  little  red  spot,  took  a  pair 
of  tweezers  and  pulled  the  fishbone  out." 

As  simple  a  surgical  operation  as  that  the 
court  physician  in  the  greatest  non-Christian 
country  the  world  has  ever  developed  could  not 
perform!  "What,  then,  about  the  setting  of  a 
broken  arm  or  a  broken  limb! 

Long  ago  the  Chinese  discovered  the  supe- 
riority of  Western  medicine  over  their  own 
antiquated  system,  and  when  they  began  their 
great  reform  measures  of  1898,  one  of  the  first 
things  they  did  was  to  introduce  a  regular  med- 
ical department  into  their  great  colleges  and 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVILIZATION        51 

universities.  And  when  the  North  China  Edu- 
cational Union  began  to  build  their  medical 
school  in  Peking,  besides  the  officials  of  the 
capital  subscribing  liberally,  the  empress  dow- 
ager herself  gave  nine  thousand  dollars  toward 
the  erection  of  the  building;  and  when  it  was 
dedicated  she  sent  her  nephew,  Prince  Chiin, 
the  present  regent,  father  of  the  emperor,  to  be 
present  at  the  dedication.  The  regent  was  also 
present  at  the  dedication  of  the  Methodist  Hos- 
pital and  has  shown  a  particular  interest  in  all 
phases  of  educational  and  medical  work  in  and 
about  the  capital. 

And  well  he  might,  for  another  incident  that 
occurred  in  Peking  will  reveal  another  phase  of 
Chinese  medicine. 

One  day  one  of  the  leading  portrait  painters 
of  China  came  to  call  on  me.  He  was  not  feel- 
ing well,  and  when  I  inquired  the  nature  of  the 
malady  he  simply  answered,  '^Tu  tze  pu  hao;" 
a  polite  translation  of  which  would  be  that  his 
stomach  was  out  of  order.  He  did  not  ask  for 
treatment  nor  request  an  interview  with  the 
doctor.  I  returned  his  call  less  than  a  week 
thereafter.  When  I  called  at  his  studio  and  in- 
quired about  him,  his  pupils  said, 

^'He  is  dead." 


52     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

*^How  is  thatr'  I  inquired.  '^He  called  on 
me  less  than  a  week  since." 

**Yes,''  they  answered;  ^'but  he  has  been 
ailing  for  some  time,  and  one  of  the  men  in  the 
shop  or  store  across  the  way  said  that  he  had 
a  prescription  which  would  exactly  suit  his 
style  of  sickness.'' 

'^Was  the  man  a  physician  T'  I  inquired. 

^^No,"  they  replied;  ''just  a  clerk  in  the 
store. ' ' 

**And  what  did  he  prescribe?'' 

*'He  told  our  teacher  to  swallow  a  large 
green  grasshopper,"  they  answered;  "about 
that  large,"  putting  the  end  of  the  thumb 
against  the  middle  of  the  index  finger. 

"And  what  happened?"  I  asked. 

"He  swallowed  the  grasshopper  and  died 
within  a  few  hours." 

Now,  my  wife,  who  is  a  physician,  tells  me 
"that  grasshopper  ought  not  to  have  killed 
him,"  and  my  only  answer  is  a  counter-ques- 
tion: 

"Isn't  it  pretty  difficult  to  say  what  a  live 
grasshopper  in  a  weak  stomach  might  do  for 
a  sick  man?  All  that  I  know  about  the  matter 
is  that  he  swallowed  the  grasshopper  and  died 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVILIZATION        53 

within  a  few  hours,  and  his  wife  sued  the  man 
in  the  shop  for  having  killed  her  husband." 

And  so  I  said  to  my  friend  with  the  filling 
in  his  tooth: 

''That  is  medicine  and  surgery  in  the  great- 
est non-Christian  country  in  the  world.  How 
would  you  like  to  live  in  a  country  with  no  bet- 
ter religion  and  no  more  science  than  that? 
Now,  my  theory  is  that  it  is  the  gospel  that  has 
contributed  to  the  production  of  all  our  sci- 


ence." 


**Yes,  I  have  heard  you  say  that  before;  but 
I  do  not  believe  it.  I  think  it  is  the  white  man. ' ' 
And  so  do  you,  my  dear  reader^ 

*' Will  you  be  good  enough  to  tell  me  why 
you  think  it  is  the  white  manT'  I  asked. 

*'0h,  that  is  easy.  The  white  man  is  the 
most  highly  developed  man.  He  's  the— the— 
the  best  part  of  the  human  race." 

''I  knew  you  believed  that,"  I  responded, 
*'and  I  thought  you  would  say  it.  You  remind 
me  of  a  conversation  I  had  with  a  young  man 
in  a  railroad  train."  And  I  related  the  follow- 
ing incident : 

I  was  going  from  Topeka,  Kan.,  to  Kansas 
City  last  winter  on  the  railroad  train.    A  hand- 


54     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

some  young  fellow  about  six  feet  tall,  weighing, 
I  should  think,  about  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  or  eighty  pounds,  entered  the  car  and  sat 
down  beside  me.  He  was  well-groomed,  neatly 
dressed,  trim,  clean,  and  intelligent-looking. 
Like  everybody  else,  I  have  an  unbounded  ad- 
miration for  handsome,  big  men.  I  should  like 
to  be  big  and  handsome  myself — not  for  my 
own  sake,  but  just  for  the  sake  of  my  Master. 
A  big,  handsome  man  comes  out  on  the  rostrum, 
and  the  audience  looks  at  him,  and  then,  fold- 
ing their  arms,  they  sink  back  among  their 
cushions  or  in  their  seats  and  sigh  to  them- 
selves, **Well,  he  's  big  enough  to  know  some- 
thing." Now,  honestly,  do  n't  you?  But  a  lit- 
tle man  comes  out  on  the  rostrum,  and  he  has 
to  prove  that  he  knows  it  before  his  audience 
will  believe  it. 

Now,  if  I  had  been  in  a  Chinese  railroad 
train,  and  such  a  person  had  sat  down  beside 
me,  it  would  have  been  easy  to  have  gotten  ac- 
quainted. I  should  have  turned  to  him,  and 
with  a  polite  bow  Wen  ta  Jcuei  hsing,  asked  his 
honorable  name. 

**My  miserable  name  is  Wang,"  he  would 
have  replied;  ''what  is  your  honorable  cog- 
nomen T 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVILIZATION        55 

*'My  miserable  name  is  He.  "Where  are 
you  going?  and  where  did  you  come  from? 
What  are  you  going  to  doT'  etc.,  etc.,  and  we 
would  have  been  acquainted. 

Now,  in  an  American  railroad  train  it  is  en- 
tirely different.  A  man  comes  and  sits  down 
beside  you,  and  you  half  turn  and  squint  at  him 
out  of  the  corner  of  your  eye,  and  then 
straighten  up  in  a  sheepish  sort  of  way,  as 
though  you  had  been  trying  to  steal  his  pocket- 
book,  instead  of  trying  to  steal  a  glance  at  him. 

I  discovered  in  a  round-about  sort  of  way 
that  this  young  man  was  traveling  for  a  shoe 
house — traveling  for  a  shoe  house!  Every 
great  business  firm  in  the  country  has  its  men 
out  traveling  for  it,  telling  what  it  is  doing,  rep- 
resenting its  wares.  Wliat  the  Church  wants  is 
[that  every  one  of  its  members  will  go  out  and 
be  a  drummer  for  the  gospel.  Too  many  of  us 
seem  to  feel  that  when  we  have  paid  ^ye  or  ten 
dollars  toward  the  preacher's  salary  and  fifty 
cents  toward  missions  we  have  liquidated  our 
obligation  toward  Jesus  Christ.  Money  can  not 
settle  your  spiritual  obligations.  Only  service 
can  pay  your  debt  to  the  Church. 

If  ever  you  start  a  conversation  with  a  per- 


56     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

son  in  a  railroad  train,  do  not  tell  him  anything 
about  yourself.  He  will  get  tired  of  you  in 
two  minutes.  But  a  man  will  walk  two  miles 
with  you  to  tell  you  all  about  himself.  "Whyf 
Because  you  are  interested  in  the  other  fellow. 
And  the  hungry  heart  of  the  world  longs  for 
the  interest  of  his  fellow-men. 

I  talked  to  him  for  fifteen  minutes  about 
shoes — nothing  but  shoes.  I  was  interested  in 
the  make  of  shoes,  the  quality  of  shoes,  the  sale 
of  shoes,  the  prices  of  shoes — shoes.  After  we 
had  talked  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  about  shoes 
he  became  tired  of  it.  It  was  shop  to  him;  he 
wanted  to  know  who  this  fellow  is  who  is  talk- 
ing shoes  so  vigorously. 

'^My  name  is  Headland,"  I  informed  him. 
*'I  have  been  in  China  for  twenty  years,  and 
am  away  behind  the  times  in  industrial  pur- 
suits. I  am  on  the  Laymen's  Missionary  Move- 
ment." 

He  drew  in  his  breath.  He  looked  at  me  as 
though  I  were  a  curio,  and  then  he  said,  with 
perhaps  more  frankness  than  courtesy,  remem- 
bering the  interest  I  had  taken  in  shoes: 

'*You  know  I  do  not  believe  in  foreign  mis- 
sions." 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVILIZATION        57 

* '  I  did  not  know  it, ' '  I  replied.  ' '  But  would 
you  mind  telling  me  why  you  do  not  believe  in 
foreign  missions  T' 

' '  Yes,  I  '11  tell  you  why, ' '  he  answered.  ' '  If 
I  had  forty  billions  of  dollars  I  could  spend 
them  all  in  the  United  States." 

''But  would  you  do  it?"  I  asked. 

''Well,  that  is  another  question,"  he  an- 
swered. 

' '  Suppose  you  did  spend  it  all  here,  you  still 
would  not  have  all  the  people  converted,"    / 
urged. 

'*No,  but  as  long  as  there  is  so  much  to  do 
here  at  home  I  do  not  believe  in  sending  so  many 
men  and  so  much- money  abroad,"  he  insisted. 

"You  believe  in  home  missions,  then?"  I 
said,  interrogatively. 

"Yes,  I  believe  in  home  missions,"  he  re- 
plied, not  very  enthusiastically. 

"What  particular  phase  of  home  missions?" 

"Oh,  all  kinds." 

"Would  you  mind  telling  me  what  particu- 
lar home  mission  enterprise  you  help  to  sup- 
port?" I  inquired  as  innocently  as  I  could. 

"Well,"  he  replied,  "I  do  not  help  any  par- 
ticular kind." 


58     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

^' Do  n't  you  suppose/'  I  went  on,  ^Hhat 
tliere  was  just  as  much  need  of  men  and  money 
in  Jerusalem  and  Judea  and  Samaria  when 
Jesus  Christ  was  preaching  to  His  disciples  as 
there  is  in  Topeka  and  Kansas  and  the  United 
States  to-day  r' 

*^0h,  yes,  I  suppose  so,"  he  admitted. 

^'Well,  why  do  you  suppose,  when  He  only 
had  a  dozen  trained  men,  and  they  did  not 
have  any  money.  His  last  words  to  them,  in 
Acts  1 : 8,  were  to  go  *  *  to  the  uttermost  part 
of  the  earth  r' 

He  did  not  have  any  answer  to  that  question, 
and  I  went  on; 

'*Let  me  ask  you  another  question.  Sup- 
pose those  dozen  disciples  had  believed  just  as 
you  do,  where  would  you  and  I  have  been  to- 
day!" 

**0h,"  he  exclaimed,  ^^the  white  man  would 
have  gone  up  anyhow!" 

*^I  beg  your  pardon,"  I  urged,  quietly. 
*'When  Jesus  Christ  was  preaching  to  His  dis- 
ciples in  Western  Asia  your  ancestors  and  mine 
were  clothed  in  skins  and  living  in  mud-huts 
and  caves  in  Europe,  and  if  the  disciples  and 
their  followers  had  said,  'There  is  no  use  of 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVILIZATION        59 

going  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  while  there  is  so 
much  to  do  at  home,  instead  of  yon  and  I  beau- 
tifully clothed'^— and  I  looked  him  over  crit- 
ically, from  his  brightly-polished  shoes  to  his 
neatly-tied  cravat  and  well-groomed  head — * 
*^and  luxuriously  reposing  among  the  cushions 
of  a  Pullman  palace  car  in  America,  we  might 
have  been  squatting  on  our  haunches  gnawing 
a  bone  among  the  unkempt,  unbathed,  half-clad 
members  of  our  tribe  in  some  cave  in  Europe." 

^^I  don't  believe  it,"  he  interjected.  *^The 
white  man  would  have  risen  in  spite  of  every- 
thing. ' ' 

*^Do  you  not  suppose,"  I  inquired,  'Hhat  the 
white  man  has  been  upon  the  earth  as  long  as 
the  black  man  and  the  yellow  man!" 

'*Yes,  I  suppose  he  has,"  he  admitted. 

' '  Then,  how  do  you  account  for  the  fact  that 
we  made  so  little  progress  till  after  we  got  the 
gospel!" 

''Is  it  true  that  we  did  make  but  little  prog- 
ress ! "  he  asked. 

''Let  me  put  the  question  in  another  form. 
Why  did  we  not  keep  pace  with  the  yellow 
man!" 

''Didn't  we!"  he  asked. 


60     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

'*By  no  means,''  I  answered.  '^We  are  told 
in  English  history  that  4n  the  dense  forests  of 
the  north  and  west  (of  Britain)  roved  groups 
of  savage  men,  who  shot  a  deer  or  snared  a 
bustard  when  they  wanted  food,  ate  berries  and 
leaves  when  game  was  not  to  be  had,  slept  in 
caves  or  under  trees,  wherever  the  sun  found 
them  after  the  day's  chase,  and  led,  in  short,  a 
life  which,  in  tinith,  took  no  thought  for  the 
morrow.  A  gigantic  savage  wrapped  in  deer- 
skin, his  naked  limbs  stained  deep  blue  with  the 
juice  of  ivoady  his  blue  eyes  darting  lightning, 
and  a  storm  of  yellow  hair  tossing  on  his  broad 
shoulders  and  mingling  with  the  floating  ends 
of  his  tangled  moustache,  has  been  the  favorite 
portrait  of  the  ancient  Briton,'*  as  found  in  his 
native  wilds. 

*^  Different,  indeed,  is  the  history  of  China. 
A  thousand  years  before  that  time  he  had  made 
a  mariner's  compass.  Five  hundred  years  pre- 
vious to  this  description  of  our  British  ances- 
tors Chinese  literature  had  become  so  volumi- 
nous that  he  was  forced  to  collect  the  best  of  it 
into  an  ecyclopedia  which  we  call  the  Chinese 
classics.     Two  hundred  years  before  the  time 


?  Collier's  History  of  England,  p.  11. 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVILIZATION        61 

of  this  description  of  our  British  ancestors  the 
Chinese  had  passed  out  of  the  age  of  feudalism, 
had  built  the  Great  Wall,  and  had  united  the 
whole  country  into  one  great  government ;  their 
first  great  history  had  been  written,  and  curio 
collectors  had  begun  to  gather  relics  of  ancient 
times. 

^'Now,  the  question  arises,  how  is  it  that 
the  Chinese  were  so  far  ahead  of  our  ancestors 
at  the  beginning  of  our  present  era,  for  they 
were  undoubtedly  a  thousand  years  ahead  of 
us  when  Jesus  Christ  was  preaching  in  Galilee, 
and  the  only  way  I  can  account  for  it  is  that 
they  had  a  better  religion  than  we  had.  But 
whatever  the  reason  may  be,  it  remains  a  fact 
of  history  that  we  never  made  any  progress 
worth  while  until  we  got  the  gospel." 

He  was  cornered  on  the  question  of  foreign 
missions.  He  knew  it,  and  I  knew  it,  but  he  was 
not  willing  to  admit  it ;  and  so  he  jumped  right 
out  of  that  comer  into  another  corner,  dodged 
the  question,  and  started  in  on  a  new  line. 

''You  know,  I  don't  believe  in  preachers; 
they  are  a  lazy  lot.'' 

I  had  heard  that  before,  and  I  was  prepared 
with  an  answer. 


62     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

**Do  you  mean  to  say,"  I  asked,  *^that  all 
the  men  that  are  traveling  for  your  house  are 
up  to  your  average  f 

**0h,  I  would  not  dare  say,"  he  answered. 

*^Well,  I  would.  They  are  not.  There  is 
not  a  house  in  the  United  States  in  which  all 
the  traveling  men  are  up  to  your  average.  You 
are  an  exceptional  man  physically,"  I  added, 
giving  him  a  critical  glance.  ^^You  are  above 
the  average  intellectually,  and  from  some  of 
your  remarks  I  judge  you  to  be  very  good  mor- 
ally. But  will  you  pardon  me  if  I  say  I  do  not 
think  you  are  much  religiously?  You  are, 
therefore,  only  about  two-thirds  developed; 
your  intellectual  third  and  your  moral  third. 
Now,  in  all  kinds  of  business  we  have  all  grades 
of  men.  But  will  you  pardon  me  if  I  say,  in 
spite  of  your  ideas  of  preachers,  that  the  civi- 
lization of  the  world  is  more  the  result  of  the 
preachers  of  the  gospel  than  of  any  other  one 
class  of  men!' 

He  did  not  have  any  answer  to  that.  There 
is  no  answer  to  it  except  to  admit  it.  It  is  a 
mistake  to  suppose,  as  some  do,  that  Confucian- 
ism, Buddhism,  and  Mohammedanism  have  re- 
tarded the  development  of  the  Asiatic  peoples. 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVILIZATION        63 

Tliey  have  not.  They  have  raised  them  to  just 
as  high  a  level  as  the  system  can  raise  them. 
No  man  nor  any  people  ever  rises  above  their 
religion. 

My  friend  had  no  answer  to  my  remarks 
about  preachers,  and  so  again  he  avoided  the 
issue,  and,  knowing  that  I  had  been  many  years 
in  China,  he  said: 

*  *  Look  here,  I  do  not  believe  you  can  convert 
a  Chinaman.*' 

**Did  you  ever  try  it!"  I  asked. 

*  *  No ;  I  just  judge  by  the  looks  of  him, ' '  he 
answered. 

^  ^  I  have  been  sixteen  years  in  China, "  I  re- 
marked. ^^That  is  not  a  very  long  time,  but 
long  enough  to  have  learned  something.  I 
would  like  to  tell  you  a  story."  And  I  told  him 
the  following: 


CHAPTER  VI 
A  GENUINE  PRODUCT 

Many  years  ago  there  was  a  little  boy  working 
in  a  soap  and  candle  store  just  across  the  city 
wall  from  our  mission  in  Peking. 

One  day  he  saw  a  missionary  coming  across 
the  street  with  books  in  his  hands,  and  he  said 
to  his  associates: 

^^Kuei  tze  lai  liao — the  foreign  devil  is  com- 
ing/' 

The  missionary,  who  proved  to  be  Dr.  L.  W. 
Pilcher,  entered  the  store,  put  the  books  down 
on  the  counter,  and  asked: 

^^Have  you  seen  these  books?" 

They  had  not  seen  the  books,  but  the  boy 
bought  one. 

Whenever  you  find  a  small  laboring  boy 
buying  a  book  and  studying  it  you  will  soon 
find  him  going  up  and  up,  and  it  is  impossible 
to  predict  where  he  will  land. 

This  boy,  whose  name  was  Ch'en,  left  the 

64 


A  GENUINE  PRODUCT  65 

soap  and  candle  store  and  entered  the  London 
Mission  School. 

He  studied  diligently. 

He  was  converted. 

Now,  one  can  be  converted  in  sections. 
Some  men  get  their  head  converted,  and  one 
man  with  his  head  converted  without  his  heart 
can  be  more  trouble  in  a  Church  than  all  the 
rest  of  the  men  together. 

Then  it  is  possible  to  have  the  heart  con- 
verted without  the  head,  and  this  kind  is  almost 
as  much  trouble  as  the  other.  He  is  all  froth 
and  foam  without  foundation.  We  had  that 
kind  of  a  man  in  the  great  laymen's  meeting  in 
Indianapolis.  While  we  were  speaking  he 
would  listen  attentively  until  we  were  just  about 
to  reach  a  climax.  He  thought  he  saw  what  was 
coming  before  we  finished  our  sentence,  and  he 
would  lean  back  and,  with  a  seraphic  look  on 
his  face,  would  clap  his  hands  and  say,  Amen. 
The  first  time  he  said  it  nobody  paid  much  at- 
tention except  to  look  surprised  at  the  way  he 
did  it.  But  after  he  had  repeated  it  a  half- 
dozen  times  everybody  would  look  in  his  direc- 
tion and  laugh — and  we  lost  our  point.  He  had 
a  good  heart,  but  a  bad  balance  wheel. 

5 


60     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Then  these  laymen  tell  me — and  whenever 
a  lot  of  business  men  agree  in  telling  me  any- 
thing I  am  ready  to  accept  it — they  tell  me  that 
there  is  another  part  of  a  man  that  is  harder 
to  convert  than  his  head  or  his  heart  (putting 
his  hand  in  his  pocket) — yes,  his  pocketbook. 
But  it  is  possible  to  be  converted — head,  heart, 
pocketbook,  and  all — and  you  are  ready  to  say, 
not  sing  merely — ^you  can  sing  anything;  most 
of  us  sing  only  for  the  music  anyhow — but  you 
can  say  with  all  your  nature: 

"  I  '11  go  where  you  want  me  to  go,  dear  Lord, 
Over  mountain,  or  vale,  or  sea. 
And  I  '11  stay— 

I  wish  it  were  written  that  way — 

"  I  'II  stay  where  you  want  me  to  stay,  dear  Lord, 
You  can  always  depend  on  me. 

Oh,  what  a  power  the  Church  would  be  if  the 
Lord  could  depend  upon  every  man,  woman, 
and  child  for  whatever  there  was  for  him  to 
do!  There  is  just  as  much  need  of  men  and 
women  staying  here  at  home  as  there  is  of 
others  going  to  the  foreign  field. 

That  is  the  way  Ch'en  was  converted. 

He  went  home  and  told  his  mother  that  he 


A  GENUINE  PRODUCT  67 

wanted  to  join  tlie  Church  and  be  baptized  at 
the  London  Mission.  His  mother  was  outraged. 
*^My  son  join  the  Christian  Church!"  But  she 
did  not  forbid  it.  She  was  too  wise  for  that. 
Mrs.  Ch'en  knew  that  to  forbid  a  boy  to  do  a 
thing  he  has  set  his  mind  on  without  giving 
him  anything  else  to  do,  will  make  him  want 
to  do  it  the  more.  She  therefore  began  to  think 
of  a  way  to  wean  him  away  from  his  religion. 

After  considering  various  methods  she  de- 
cided to  have  him  engaged  and  married.  If 
there  was  anything  that  would  take  a  boy's 
mind  off  his  religion  it  would  be  the  being  en- 
gaged and  married. 

She  selected  a  young  lady  named  Li,  a  mem- 
ber of  a  non-Christian  family ;  and  she  told  the 
boy  he  was  to  be  married. 

Of  course,  he  said  he  would.  There  was  not 
anything  else  to  do.  In  China  the  mother  se- 
lects the  wife  for  her  son ;  the  father  selects  the 
husband  for  his  daughter.  The  mother  knows 
the  girls;  the  father  knows  the  boys.  They 
naturally  select  the  best  they  can  find,  engage 
them  to  each  other  without  the  knowledge  of 
the  young  people,  and  in  due  time  they  are  mar- 
ried; and  if  they  fall  in  love  they  have  to  do 
it  afterward. 


68     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Ch'en  waited  until  all  tlie  arrangements  had 
been  completed  and  Ms  mother,  according  to 
Chinese  custom,  was  about  to  call  a  sedan  chair 
and  send  for  the  young  lady.  She  would  be 
brought  and  put  into  his  apartments,  with 
certain  other  Chinese  ceremonies,  and  they 
would  be  married. 

But  Ch'en  said:  *^No;  I  propose  to  be  mar- 
ried over  at  the  mission  with  the  Christian  cere- 
mony.' And  he  smiled  and  shut  his  teeth  to- 
gether. 

And,  you  know,  you  can  do  anything  if  you 
just  smile  and  shut  your  teeth  together.  You 
can't  do  it  if  you  only  smile;  and  you  can't  do 
it  if  you  just  shut  your  teeth;  but  smile  and 
grit  your  teeth,  and  you  can  do  anything,  for 
the  world  is  waiting  for  you  to  will,  to  decide 
what  you  are  going  to  do,  and  then  the  world 
will  pitch  in  and  help  you  do  it. 

Have  you  ever  stood  beside  the  railroad  and 
watched  a  great  freight  train  passing!  There 
are  eight  large  wheels  on  the  engine  driven  by 
the  piston,  and  they  each  seem  to  say  with 
every  turn,  '  ^  I  will ;  I  will ;  I  will. ' '  Following 
them  are  two  or  three  hundred  other  small 
wheels,  all  turning  the  same  way,  ^'I  will;  I 


A  GENUINE  PRODUCT  69 

will ;  I  will ;  I  will ; ' '  and  all  because  these  eight 
are  turning.  The  world  is  waiting  for  you  to 
decide  what  you  are  going  to  do,  and 

Ch'en  was  married  over  at  the  mission  with 
the  Christian  ceremony.  . 

But  you  can  not  keep  a  wife  and  study  on 
nothing  a  year— in  Peking;  so  Ch'en  had  to 
find  something  else  to  do. 

The  mission  wrote  him  a  letter,  **To  whom 
it  may  concern,"  saying  that  this  boy  Ch'en 
was  very  diligent  and  reliable,  and  would  make 
a  good  servant  to  any  one  needing  a  **boy." 

We  needed  a  servant.  In  China  every  one 
builds  a  wall  around  his  house;  no  one  has  a 
fence  on  his  farm.  We  place  our  houses  close 
together ;  then  we  build  one  wall  around  the  lot. 
That  is  a  compound.  Then  we  have  a  gate  in 
the  wall  and  a  gatekeeper  in  the  gatehouse. 
We  therefore  engaged  Ch'en  as  our  gatekeeper. 

He  wanted  to  be  a  gatekeeper  in  the  house 
of  the  Lord — he  wanted  to  be  a  preacher;  and 
he  said  to  himself, '  *  If  you  want  to  be  anything, 
begin  where  you  are,  and  be  it  with  all  your 
might."  What  a  motto  for  a  boy!  Principals 
of  high  schools  and  mothers  have  telephoned 
me  after  they  had  heard  these  words  of  Ch'en, 


70     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

asking:  ^^What  was  that  you  said  about  ^If 
you  want  to  be  anything  T  I  want  it  for  my 
boy." 

Ch'en  changed  the  gatehouse  into  a  gospel 
hall,  for  he  began  preaching  therein.  Every 
one  who  went  in  or  out  of  that  gate  was  told 
of  the  gospel  in  which  he  believed.  "Whenever 
he  had  opportunity  he  went  out  to  the  street 
chapel  and  preached  there.  He  took  trips  with 
the  missionaries  out  into  the  country  places, 
where  he  preached  daily,  hourly,  all  the  time; 
and  our  mission  history  records  that  the  first 
two  people  that  joined  our  Church  in  Peking 
were  brought  in  not  by  the  preacher,  not  by 
the  missionaries,  but  ^^by  Ch'en,  our  gate- 
keeper— one  a  scholar,  the  other  a  coolie;''  the 
highest  and  the  lowest  class. 

But  Ch'en's  wife  could  not  read  a  word,  and 
he  said  to  himself,  *'If  I  am  going  to  be  a 
preacher,  my  wife  ought  to  be  able  to  read." 
So  he  said  to  her  one  day,  with  a  kindly  smile 
on  his  face,  *'I  wish  you  would  study  the  cate- 
chism." 

Mrs.  Ch'en  was  a  married  woman,  and  she 
did  not  propose  to  begin  studying  now;  but  she 
did  not  say  she  would  not — a  woman  does  not 


A  GENUINE  PRODUCT  71 

say  she  won't  to  her  husband — in  China.  But 
she  did  not  study. 

Ch'en  waited  awhile,  and  then  he  said  to  her 
a  second  time,  *^I  wish  you  would  study  the 
catechism."    Still  Mrs.  Ch'en  did  not. 

Again  Ch'en  waited,  and  then  he  ordered 
her  to  study  the  catechism.  Mrs.  Ch'en  thought 
matters  began  to  look  a  bit  serious,  but  she 
paid  no  attention  to  the  order. 

Ch'en  waited  longer  than  usual  this  time, 
and  then  he  commanded  her  to  study  the  cate- 
chism.   Still  Mrs.  Ch'en  did  not  obey. 

Now,  when  Mr.  Ch'en  had  tried  every  kind 
of  moral  suasion  he  could  think  of,  and  they  had 
all  failed,  he  took  her  off  to  a  deserted  part  of 
the  compound  and  whipped  her  until  she  prom- 
ised to  study  the  catechism — ^because  he  wanted 
to  be  a  preacher. 

I  wonder  what  you  would  do  if  your  young 
theological  students  treated  their  young  wives 
in  that  way.  And  we  knew  that  Ch'en  had  done 
it,  and  we  did  not  bring  him  up  before  the 
Church.  Why?  Well,  first,  because  we  knew 
he  had  not  hurt  her.  He  did  not  whip  her  to 
hurt  her ;  it  was  just  to  make  her  study  the  cate- 
chism.   Then,  second,  we  knew  that  in  China 


72     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

a  man  has  a  right  to  whip  his  wife — if  he  can. 
And  a  woman  has  a  right  to  whip  her  hnsband, 
if  she  can.  And  she  does  it;  and  that  is  the 
reason  why  there  has  been  a  woman  sitting  on 
the  throne  of  China  for  the  past  forty-seven 
years. 

Mrs.  Ch'en  studied  the  catechism.  She 
learned  every  word  of  it.  She  remembered  it 
till  the  last  day  of  her  life,  and  she  taught  it 
to  every  one  of  her  children. 

But  when  her  first  baby  was  bom  it  was  a 
girl.  I  wish  you  could  have  seen  that  little  girl ; 
she  was  one  of  the  prettiest  children  I  have  ever 
known,  and  the  first  remark  made  by  every  one 
who  saw  her  was,  ^^Wliat  a  beautiful  child 
Mary  Ch'en  is!'' 

But  she  was  a  girl,  and  that  is  bad  luck  in 
China,  But  in  addition  to  being  a  girl,  she  was 
born  on  the  first  day  of  the  first  month.  And 
Grandmother  Ch'en  said:  ^'That  is  because  you 
are  a  Christian.  Your  first  baby  is  a  girl  bom 
on  New  Year's  Bay;  you  will  never  have  any- 
thing but  bad  luck  all  your  life. " 

Ch'en  smiled  and  went  on  preaching;  and 
his  next  baby  was  a  boy. 

Old  Mrs.  Ch'en  shook  her  head  and  sighed, 


A  GENUINE  PRODUCT  73 

saying,  *  ^  It  will  take  more  than  one  boy  to  avert 
the  calamity  of  the  first  baby  being  a  girl  bom 
on  New  Year's  Day.'' 

Ch'en  still  smiled  and  continued  to  preach; 
and  his  next  baby  was  a  boy. 

Grandmother  Ch'en  still  shook  her  head, 
but  not  so  vigorously  as  she  had  before;  and 
Ch'en  still  smiled  and  preached;  and  his  next 
baby  was  a  boy,  and  his  next,  and  his  next,  and 
his  next — five  boys  in  succession;  and  Grand- 
mother Ch'en  had  nothing  further  to  say  about 
calamity  coming  to  a  Christian's  home  because 
his  first  baby  was  a  girl  bom  on  New  Year's 
Bay. 

As  soon  as  Mary  was  old  enough  to  study 
the  catechism,  Mrs.  Ch'en  put  her  to  work  upon 
it.  As  the  child  sat  on  her  little  stool  at  her 
mother's  feet  she  would  sometimes  say, 
'* Mamma,  what  is  this  word?" 

Without  looking  up  from  her  fancy  work  or 
sewing,  Mrs.  Ch'en  would  answer,  *^Read  a  few 
words  before  it,"  and  without  looking  at  the 
book  she  could  tell  her  the  name  of  the  charac- 
ter; and  so  she  did  with  all  her  children. 

Ch'en  called  the  little  girl  Mary — for  the 
mother  of  His  Lord.    His  first  son  he  called 


74     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Jolin,  for  the  most  beloved  disciple;  tlien  Jacob, 
and  be  started  rigbt  down  the  list  of  the  patri- 
archs. 

There  is  a  lot  of  character  in  parents  indi- 
cated by  the  names  they  give  their  children. 
Some  parents  give  their  boys  big,  strong  names, 
and  their  girls  beautiful,  aesthetic  names.  I  re- 
member in  my  grandfather's  family  we  had 
Abraham,  Isaac,  Jacob,  and  Elijah.  And  in  my 
father's  family  we  have  Abraham,  Isaac,  Jacob, 
Elijah,  Eli,  John,  and  some  more ;  and  they  put 
Isaac  on  me.  As  boys  we  did  not  like  it.  We 
thought  our  parents  might  have  been  more  orig- 
inal in  the  names  they  gave  us.  But  as  I  look 
back  over  my  father's  and  grandfather's  fami- 
lies and  find  them  both  keeping  to  the  Old  Book, 
even  in  the  names  they  gave  their  children,  I 
feel  rather  satisfied.  I  think  it  is  a  recom- 
mendation rather  than  otherwise  to  a  boy  to 
have  two  or  three  generations  of  ancestors  witli 
Bible  names.  There  is  not  much  in  a  name, 
anyhow.  Isaac  with  Newton  is  a  tremendous 
combination.  And  who  would  not  be  Benjamin 
if  he  could  be  Franklin,  or  Abraham  if  he  could 
be  Lincoln  ?  It  is  the  character  of  the  man  that 
counts,  and  not  the  name. 


A  GENUINE  PRODUCT  75 

That  first  boy  John!  He  does  not  amount 
to  much.  Jacob  died  as  a  child.  But  that  third 
boy  is  almost  a  saint.  Tell  me,  why  is  it  that 
two  boys,  born  of  the  same  parents,  nourished 
at  the  same  breast,  fed  at  the  same  table,  study- 
ing the  same  books,  in  the  same  seat,  at  the 
same  school,  one  will  be  almost  a  saint  and  the 
other  almost  a  devil? 

One  man  answered  from  the  audience,  when 
I  asked  this  question, 

'*It  is  heredity,  Headland;  heredity  ac- 
counts for  it  all.'' 

'^What,''  I  asked,  ^^  heredity  from  the  same 
parents  r' 

He  hesitated,  with  his  mouth  half  open,  but 
did  not  say  anything;  and  I  added: 

**  Heredity,  individuality,  and  the  gospel 
may  account  for  it,  I  fancy,  but  not  heredity 
alone." 

The  third  son  entered  the  Peking  Univer- 
sity. He  studied.  He  completed  the  course. 
When  he  graduated  he  was  offered  forty  dol- 
lars per  month  if  he  would  go  into  business  in 
Shanghai.  This  he  refused,  and  became  a 
preacher  in  a  small  Church  up  outside  the 
Great  Wall  for  two  dollars  and  fifty  cents  per 
moutlL 


76     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

The  next  son  graduated.  He  has  been  of- 
fered one  hundred  dollars  a  month  if  he  would 
enter  secular  employment;  but  he  refused  all 
other  offers  and  became  a  teacher  in  the  Peking 
University  at  ^ve  dollars  per  month.  The  last 
of  the  five  boys  graduated.  He  has  just  about 
completed  the  course  at  Columbia  University 
as  a  doctor  of  science,  in  order  to  return  to 
China  and  take  some  position  in  the  employ  of 
the  government. 

Would  it  not  have  been  a  fatal  mistake  to 
have  turned  Ch'en  out  of  Church  because  he 
whipped  his  wife  to  make  her  study  the  cate- 
chism? It  pays  sometimes  to  be  lenient  with 
the  boy  who  is  in  earnest.  We  learned  that 
from  the  Master. 

Peter  denied  his  Lord;  but  the  next  time 
he  met  the  Master,  Jesus  did  not  say  to  him, 
**  Peter,  you  are  a  fine  disciple — afraid  to  an- 
swer a  girl  truthfully."  You  remember  the 
next  time  Peter  met  Jesus.  It  was  up  on  the 
Sea  of  Galilee.  Peter  had  gone  up  home  after 
the  crucifixion.  One  evening  he  said,  **I  'm  go- 
ing fishing;"  and  the  rest  of  the  fellows  all 
said,  *^We  '11  go  with  you;"  and  they  all  went 
fishing.    They  fished  all  night,  and  they  did  not 


A  GENUINE  PRODUCT  77 

catch  any  fish.  The  next  morning  they  were 
cold  and  tired  and  sleepy  and  hungry,  and  a 
voice  came  from  the  shore, 

'*  Children,  have  ye  any  meatr' 
*'No.'' 

Well,  you  are  confining  your  fishing  too 
much  to  one  side  of  the  boat.  This  was  implied 
in  what  He  said.  And  the  world  for  the  past 
nineteen  hundred  years  has  been  fishing  too 
much  only  on  one  side  of  the  boat. 

' '  Cast  the  net  on  the  right  side  of  the  boat," 
was  the  order  of  the  Master,  and  it  was  so  filled 
with  fish  that  they  were  afraid  to  draw  it  in 
lest  it  break.  And  we  have  been  letting  our 
net  down  on  the  other  side  of  the  world  during 
the  past  fifty  years,  and  we  have  been  bringing 
in  nations  in  a  day. 

When  John  heard  the  voice  he  said,  ''It  is 
the  Lord."  Yes,  Peter  had  denied  the  Master; 
but  as  soon  as  he  knew  it  was  He,  he  jumped 
into  the  sea  and  swam  ashore.  And  Jesus  did 
not  say  to  him:  ''Peter,  you  are  back  at  your 
old  job  again,  are  you!  Have  taken  all  the  rest 
with  you?"  No;  He  did  not  say  that.  He  did 
not  say  anything.  Peter  just  saw  a  fire  of  coals 
and   fish   thereon;    and    Jesus   had   prepared 


78     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Peter's  breakfast  with  His  own  pierced  hands. 
And  He  fed  him,  and  then  He  preached  to  him. 
Yon  remember  His  little  sermon!     It  is  very 
short;  bnt,  oh,  what  a  wealth  of  meaning  there 
is  in  it  for  you  and  me  as  well  as  for  Peter! 
** Simon,  son  of  Jonas,  lovest  thou  Me?" 
*'Lord,  Thou  knowest  that  I  love  Thee." 
And  Jesus  did  know  that  Peter  loved  Him 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  in  a  moment  of  weak- 
ness he  had  denied  Him.     Then: 

*'Feed  My  hungry  sheep."  **Feed  My 
starving  lambs." 

And  Peter  fed  the  sheep  and  the  lambs  with 
his  life. 

"  I  '11  go  where  you  want  me  to  go,  dear  Lord, 
Over  mountains,  or  vale,  or  sea," 
I  '11  stay  where  you  want  me  to  stay,  dear  Lord, 
You  can  always  depend  on  me. 

And  the  Master  is  saying  the  same  thing  to 
you  and  me  to-day: 

*  *  Feed  My  hungry  rheep,  feed  My  starving 
lambs." 

The  papers  tell  us  that  two  million  and  five 
hundred  thousand  Chinese  will  starve  unless 
America  sends  them  food.  Where  does  Amer- 
ica get  the  food  to  send  to  so  many  famine- 


A  GENUINE  PRODUCT  79 

stricken  people!  How  is  it  that  we  hear  of 
famines  in  China,  and  famines  in  India,  and 
famines  in  Africa,  and  famine  and  plague  and 
pestilence  and  poverty  in  all  non-Christian 
lands! 

Bnt  when  did  yon  hear  of  a  famine  in  Ger- 
many, or  a  famine  in  England,  or  a  famine  in 
America,  or  a  famine  in  any  other  country  that 
has  a  free  Bible!  I  can  not  but  look  upon  these 
and  all  other  similar  conditions  as  by-products 
of  the  gospel.  If  you  can  not  see  them  in  that 
way— well,  all  I  can  say  is  that  it  is  up  to  you 
to  account  for  them  in  some  other  more  rea- 
sonable way. 

Ch'en,  yes,  he  had  whipped  his  wife  to  make 
her  study  the  catechism;  but  he  was  our  first 
preacher  in  the  North  China  Conference,  and 
we  could  send  him  anywhere  and  be  certain  that 
there  would  be  no  trouble  while  he  was  pastor 
of  the  Church.  He  was  at  the  Conference  in 
Peking  at  the  beginning  of  the  Boxer  rebellion 
of  1900,  and  was  appointed  to  the  same  Church 
where  his  son  had  gone  some  years  before.  He 
took  his  wife  and  his  youngest  son  and  daugh- 
ter, and  reached  his  Church  just  two  months 
before  the  Boxers  came. 


80     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

When  lie  arrived  the  members  said  to 
him: 

'*  Brother  Ch'en,  you  must  flee,  and  hide  in 
the  mountains,  because  if  the  Boxers  catch  you 
they  will  put  you  to  death." 

His  only  answer  was : 

**I  am  the  shepherd  of  this  flock.  When 
all  my  flock  are  hidden  away  and  safe,  then 
I  '11  go  and  hide ;  not  till  then. ' ' 

In  the  light  of  all  that  happened  I  do  not 
know  of  anything  that  seems  more  Christlike 
than  that.  ^^I  am  the  shepherd  of  this  flock. 
When  all  my  flock  are  safe,  then  I  will  run 
away."  He  delayed  too  long.  As  he  was  go- 
ing out  of  the  village  the  Boxers  caught  him. 
The  Boxer  chief  took  away  his  bedding,  his 
clothing,  his  money— everything  he  had;  then 
turned  him  over  to  the  rabble  and  said: 

**Now  you  may  do  what  you  please  with 
him." 

Without  the  semblance  of  a  trial  they  cut  off 
his  head,  and  left  his  body  and  bones  to  bleach 
there  upon  the  plains  of  Mongolia  during  the 
summer  of  1900. 

They  beheaded  his  youngest  son,  as  noble  a 
boy  as  we  have  ever  had  in  the  Peking  Univer- 


A  GENUINE  PRODUCT  81 

sity;  and  the  youngest  daughter  flew  to  her 
mother's  arms,  crying, 

Oh,  mamma,  what  shall  we  doT' 

*^We  will  all  go  to  heaven  together,"  an- 
swered her  mother  in  simple  faith  and  trust. 

And  they  butchered  the  mother  and  daugh- 
ter locked  in  each  other's  arms. 

And  Ch'en  fed  the  sheep  and  the  lambs  with 
liis  life. 

**  I  '11  go  where  you  want  me  to  go,  dear  Lord, 
Over  mountain,  or  vale,  or  sea,** 
I  '11  stay  where  you  want  me  to  stay,  dear  Lord, 
You  can  always  depend  on  me. 

And  I  turned  to  my  friend  in  the  railroad 
train  and  said : 

*^Do  you  think  Ch'en  was  converted  T' 

There  were  tears  in  his  eyes  as  he  answered, 
**I  guess  he  was." 

*'Well,  it  took  us  ninety  years  to  get  one 
hundred  thousand  Christians  in  China.  During 
eight  weeks  of  that  Boxer  trouble  of  1900,  ten 
thousand  of  our  hundred  thousand  laid  down 
their  lives  rather  than  deny  their  Lord.  And 
the  blood  of  the  martyrs  is  the  seed  of  the 
Church.  In  ten  years  since  that  time  we  have 
added  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  other 

6 


82     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Christians  to  tlie  hundred  thousand  we  had  be- 
fore. But  the  number  of  persons  gathered  into 
the  Church  is  only  one  of  the  results  of  foreign 
missions.  The  civilization  of  the  world,  traced 
back  to  a  last  analysis,  is  the  result  of  the  mis- 
sion of  the  Church. 

**Yet  there  are  tourists  who  go  around  the 
world  without  ever  visiting  a  mission,  and  then 
return  and  pose  as  an  authority  on  missions 
and  missionaries.  God  pity  the  man  or  woman 
whose  views  of  the  Church  are  limited  to  the 
number  of  members  that  may  be  gathered 
within  its  walls.  We  call  the  United  States  a 
Christian  country.  Whether  it  is  or  not  I  do 
not  propose  to  say.  There  are  about  ninety 
million  people  in  this  country,  not  more  than 
thirty-three  million  of  whom  are  members  of 
the  Church,  and  a  majority  of  these  are  women 
and  children.  But  may  I  call  attention  to  the 
fact  that  these  thirty-three  million  of  men, 
women,  and  children  dominate  and  control  the 
sentiment  of  the  United  States  Government 
aind  make  it  impossible  for  a  man  not  controlled 
by  Christian  principles  to  exert  a  dominating 
influence  in  the  government? 

**Now,"  I  said  to  my  friend,  **you  would 


A  GENUINE  PRODUCT  83 

not  blame  Ch'en's  sons  if  they  liated  those  peo- 
ple who  mnrdered  their  father,  mother,  sister, 
and  brother,  would  youT' 

*'No,"  he  answered;  ^'I  would  not." 

**Nor  would  you  blame  them  if  they  de- 
manded a  heavy  indemnity  for  what  their  par- 
ents lost." 

Again  he  said  he  would  not. 

' '  AVhen  the  Boxer  trouble  was  over, ' '  I  went 
on,  *Hhe  Chinese  Government  offered  to  pay 
for  everything  the  Christians  lost  at  the  hands 
of  the  Boxers.  When  the  missionaries  were 
settling  up  the  indemnity  question  they  went 
to  this  boy  who  had  preached  in  the  Church 
where  his  parents  were  massacred,  and  said  to 
him: 

*'  'Wei-ping,  what  do  you  want  for  what 
your  parents  lost?  They  lost  everything  they 
had.' 

''His  head  fell;  his  chest  heaved;  tears  filled 
his  eyes ;  and  then  he  answered, 

"  '  I  do  not  want  anything. '  And  they  never 
took  a  cash. 

"The  next  year,  when  the  bishop  was  about 
to  give  him  his  appointment,  before  doing  so  he 
asked  him  where  he  would  like  to  go  to  preach. 


84     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

''Again  his  head  fell;  he  swallowed  with 
difficulty,  and  when  he  could  control  his  voice 
he  answered, 

*'  'I  would  like  to  go  and  preach  to  those 
people  who  murdered  my  father  and  mother 
and  sister  and  brother;'  and  this  was  all  he 
asked. ' ' 


CHAPTEE  VII 

BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVIC  LIFE 

In  1890  I  boarded  a  Pullman  palace  car  in 
Chicago  bound  for  San  Francisco.  I  could  go 
to  bed  as  comfortably  in  that  conveyance  as 
I  could  in  my  own  home.  I  could  get  up  in  the 
morning,  go  into  the  diner,  and  have  as  good 
a  breakfast  as  I  could  at  home;  and  in  three 
days  I  was  carried  across  vast  plains  and  great 
rivers,  majestic  mountains  and  deep  ravines, 
and  put  down  in  San  Francisco,  three  thousand 
miles  away.  It  was  a  moving  home — a  moving 
hotel. 

There  I  boarded  a  floating  palace  to  cross 
that — shall  I  say,  trackless  ocean?  No;  it  was 
trackless  until  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  found 
it — as  all  oceans  were.  But  from  that  time 
until  the  present  it  has  been  tracked  all  over 
by  those  floating  palaces.  Again  I  could  go  to 
bed  as  comfortably  in  this  conveyance  as  I 
could  at  home,  and  if  I  did  not  get  up  in  the 
morning  and  take  as  good  a  breakfast  as  I  could 

85 


86     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

at  liome  it  was  not  because  the  breakfast  was 
not  prepared.  And  I  did  not.  I  have  a  habit 
of  not  going  to  breakfast  the  first  morning  after 
I  get  out  to  sea.  Perhaps  you  have.  But  in 
thirteen  days  I  had  crossed  that  ocean  and  had 
reached  Japan. 

There  I  boarded  a  still  smaller  floating  pal- 
ace, which  took  me  comfortably  over  to  Sliang- 
hai.  There  I  boarded  a  very  much  smaller  one, 
wliich  took  me  up  the  coast  of  China  to  Tongku, 
the  port  of  Peking,  which  was  to  be  my  destina- 
tion. 

At  Tongku  I  went  on  shore  and  found  a 
railroad  train.  It  was  a  little  train,  and  it  was 
not  very  clean.  The  seats  were  made  of  floor- 
boards. The  backs  of  the  seats  were  perpen- 
dicular floorboards.  The  floor  was  dirty;  the 
windows  were  soiled;  everything  about  it  was 
dirty.  It  made  me  think  of  the  little  palm  trees 
we  have  in  pots  in  our  homes.  They  grow 
three,  four,  or  five  feet  high.  Why  do  they  not 
grow  as  high  as  the  house?  They  do  in  the 
tropics.  Why?  They  are  out  of  their  element. 
Take  a  gospel-developed  thought — and  a  rail- 
road train  is  a  gospel-developed  thought — and 
put  it  out  of  its  element,  and  it  dwarfs.     But 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVIC  LIFE  87 

this  conveyance  took  me  comfortably  and  fairly 
rapidly  up  to  Tientsin,  some  forty  miles  away. 

There,  after  a  few  days'  rest  I  went  down 
to  the  riverside  and  I  chartered  a  boat  all  my 
own  to  go  to  Tnngchou.  It  was  a  honseboat. 
It  was  almost  high  enough  for  me  to  stand  up 
in.  I  could  go  to  bed  in  that  boat ;  but,  though 
solitary,  I  was  not  alone.  It  is  impossible  to 
go  to  bed  alone  in  a  Chinese  houseboat.  And 
it  took  me  from  Monday  morning  till  Friday 
evening  to  reach  Tungchou,  eighty  miles  away. 

Here  again  I  went  down  to  the  canal,  and 
I  chartered  still  another  boat  to  make  the  last 
stage  of  my  journey  to  Peking.  It  was  a  san- 
pan.  San  means  three,  and  pan  means  boards ; 
three  boards  make  a  boat.  Men  had  ropes  at- 
tached to  the  front  of  the  boat,  and  with  one 
end  of  the  rope  over  their  shoulder  they  walked 
along  the  bank  of  the  canal — it  was  not  a  tow- 
path  ;  there  was  no  tow-path — and  pulled  us  up 
to  the  walls  of  Peking.  We  could  not  all  sit 
on  the  top  of  the  boat;  so  the  rest  of  us  hired 
donkeys  and  rode  up  to  the  walls  of  Peking. 

Now,  I  have  given  this  trip  for  the  sake  of 
the  contrast:  a  Pullman  palace  car,  with  all 
the  comforts  of  home,  two  thousand  miles  in 


88     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

three  days  in  a  gospel-developed  country,  end- 
ing up  on  ^Hhree  boards"  and  a  donkey  in  a 
country  where  the  gospel  has  not  gone;  and 
almost  every  contrast  between  a  country  with 
the  gospel  and  one  without  is  the  contrast  of 
this  Pullman  palace  car  and  the  three  boards 
and  donkey.  There  are  a  lot  of  people  who 
do  not  believe  in  foreign  missions.  I  should 
like  to  take  those  people  and  put  them  down 
on  the  other  side  of  the  world,  and  let  them  ride 
on  three  boards  and  a  donkey  until  they  believe 
in  a  Pullman  palace  car  and  the  gospel. 

I  want  my  readers  to  go  with  me  into  Pe- 
king as  I  found  it  twenty  years  ago.  The 
streets  were  built  up  a  foot  and  half  or  more 
above  the  sidewalk.  Why?  In  order  that  the 
water  might  run  off  the  street  onto  the  side- 
walk in  the  rainy  season,  leaving  a  dry  passage 
for  mules  and  donkeys  and  carts.  Men  do  not 
count  in  a  country  without  a  Bible.  I  say  that 
advisedly.  One  of  our  Chinese  students  took 
a  trip  around  the  world.  When  he  returned  to 
Peking  he  said  to  the  students  in  the  course 
of  his  address ; 

*' Wherever  I  went  in  non-Christian  lands 
I  found  men  doing  the  work  of  animals.     In 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVIC  LIFE  89 

Korea  they  were  carrying  tremendous  burdens. 
In  Japan  they  were  pulling  jinrikishas.  In 
China  and  India  and  Africa  they  were  doing 
the  work  which  in  England,  America,  Germany, 
and  France  is  done  by  the  animals.  Why,  my 
friends,  is  thisT'  he  concluded. 

And  so  I  say,  men  do  not  coimt  in  a  land 
without  a  Bible.  Humanity  is  cheap.  You  can 
buy  a  man  for  less  than  you  can  buy  a  horse. 
A  woman  costs  less  than  a  cow.  I  have 
known  little  girls  to  be  sold  on  the  streets  of 
Peking  for  two  dollars  and  a  half.  Only  the 
gospel  ennobles  humanity  and  banishes  slavery. 

And  so  I  say,  they  built  their  streets  up  a 
foot  and  a  half  above  the  sidewalk  in  order  that 
the  water  might  run  off  the  street  and  leave  a 
dry  passage  for  the  animals.  There  were  de- 
pressions between  the  street  and  the  sidewalk, 
in  which  the  water  settled,  forming  pools,  some 
of  which  were  so  large  and  so  deep  that  it  was 
not  only  possible,  but  an  actual  fact,  that  peo- 
ple were  drowned  on  the  streets  of  Peking. 

The  Chinese  do  everything  the  opposite  of 
what  we  do.  They  put  their  vest  on  outside 
their  coat;  we  put  ours  inside.  They  put  on 
white  for  mourning;  we,  black.     They  shake 


90     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

their  own  hands  in  greeting;  we  shake  each 
other's  hands.  They  keep  their  back  yard  neat 
and  clean ;  we  our  front  yard.  They  bring  all 
their  kitchen  refuse,  vegetables,  and  other  dirt 
and  dump  them  into  those  pools  in  the  street. 
They  have  been  doing  that  for  fifteen  hundred 
years,  and  the  top  dozen  feet  of  the  city  of 
Peking  is  saturated  with  all  kinds  of  human 
and  animal  filth  that  your  imagination  can  pic- 
ture. 

They  dig  their  wells  down  through  this  sur- 
face soil,  and  wall  them  up  with  blocks  of  stone 
without  any  cement  of  any  kind  to  make  them 
impervious.  And  the  rain  descends  and  settles 
down  through  this  surface  soil  into  the  well. 
They  dip  it  out,  boil  it,  and  make  their  tea  of 
it,  and  drink  it — and  the  fittest  of  them  sur- 
vive. 

That,  however,  was  twenty  years  ago.  The 
gospel  has  gone  to  Peking  since  that  time,  and 
wherever  the  gospel  goes  purity  goes ;  and  dur- 
ing the  last  three  year^  pure  water  from  the 
bills  fifteen  miles  west  of  Peking  has  been  piped 
into  the  city;  and  now  they  have  a  hydrant  on 
every  street  comer,  and  each  one  of  these  hy- 
drants as  it  sends  forth  its  stream  of  pure,  re- 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVIC  LIFE  91 

freshing  water  gurgles  as  it  flows  a  by-product 
of  tlie  gospel. 

The  refuse  vegetables  which  were  thrown 
into  the  pools  would  sink  down  and  decay.  In 
the  hot  summer-time  a  thick  green  scum  would 
form  on  the  surface  of  these  pools,  broken  only 
by  the  bubbles  that  came  up  from  these  decay- 
ing vegetables.  Then,  during  the  burning  hot 
days  of  July  and  August,  when  the  street  was 
covered  with  two  or  three  inches  of  dust,  the 
street  sprinklers  would  come  along  with  long- 
handled  reed  dippers,  ladle  up  this  water,  and 
sprinkle  the  streets  with  it. 

Then  you  would  come  along  in  your  Chinese' 
cart,  and  the  hot  rays  of  the  sun  would  come 
down,  and  the  odors  would  come  up;  and  one 
of  the  questions  which  tourists  used  to  ask  each 
other  when  they  were  in  Peking  was,  ''What 
kind  of  smells  did  you  smell  to-day!''  to  which 
they  usually  answered,  ''Smells  that  I  never 
knew  the  names  of."  My  friend  Carl  Fowler, 
the  son  of  Bishop  Fowler,  told  me  recently, 
when  I  was  in  New  York,  that  when  he  was  in 
Peking,  in  1888,  he  catalogued  twenty  different 
odors  he  had  never  met  anywhere  else  in  the 
world. 


92     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

I  liave  given  you  only  a  faint  glimpse  of  tlie 
dirt  of  old  Peking  as  I  found  it  twenty  years 
ago.  The  real  dirt  you  would  not  allow  me  to 
describe,  nor  would  the  publishers  be  allowed 
to  print  it,  even  if  I  were  to  write  it.  Only 
I  may  be  allowed  to  add  that  in  the  springtime, 
when  every  one  was  suffering  from  what  we 
call  '* spring  fever,''  the  city  authorities  had 
the  sewers  cleaned.  The  dirt,  at  least  a  large 
proportion  of  it,  had  washed  in  off  the  street, 
and  it  was  taken  out,  piled  up  on  the  sidewalk, 
where  it  was  allowed  to  dry  for  a  week  or  ten 
days,  and  was  then  used  for  building  up  the 
street  again. 

This,  again,  was  twenty  years  ago;  but 
where  the  gospel  goes,  cleanliness  goes  with  it; 
and  so  now  every  great  street  in  Peking  is  ma- 
cadamized and  as  clean  as  the  macadamized 
streets  of  an  American  city  to-day.  Now,  I 
challenge  my  readers  to  name  a  clean  city  in 
any  non-Christian  country  in  the  world  where 
the  influence  of  the  gospel  and  the  missionary 
have  not  gone.  I  do  not  mean  to  say,  nor  to 
imply,  that  the  missionaries  have  brought  about 
this  condition.  But  I  do  say  that  such  a  condi- 
tion can  not  be  found  anywhere  in  the  world 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVIC  LIFE  93 

where  the  gospel  has  not  gone.  And  so  I  hold 
that,  traced  back  to  a  last  analysis,  every  clean 
city,  with  its  paved  streets,  its  macadamized 
streets,  its  asphalt  streets,  its  cement  sidewalks, 
is  a  by-product  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ, 
for  all  the  forces  that  have  contributed  to  bring 
about  these  conditions  are  directly  or  indirectly 
the  result  of  the  Church,  or  the  schools  that 
have  resulted  from  the  influence  of  the  Church. 

When  I  arrived  in  Peking  twenty  years  ago, 
the  streets  were  lit  with  street  lamps.  A  street 
lamp  at  that  time  consisted  of  four  posts  with 
a  paper  house  on  top,  in  which  was  a  small  lamp 
about  the  size  of  a  coal-digger's  lamp,  and  they 
lit  these  street  lights  on  moonlight  nights. 
They  never  lit  them  on  dark  nights,  for  the  sim- 
ple reason  that  at  such  times  every  one  had  to 
carry  his  own  lantern;  and  these  little  lamps 
did  not  give  light  enough  to  be  of  any  account. 
So  what  was  the  use  of  wasting  the  city  oil! 
But  they  lit  them  on  moonlight  nights,  that  the 
cart-drivers  might  drive  along  between  these 
lights  without  falling  off  into  the  cesspools,  and 
perhaps  drowning  themselves  as  well  as  their 
mules. 

That,  again,  was  twenty  years  ago.     But 


94     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

wherever  the  gospel  goes,  there  light  goes ;  and 
Peking  has  not  proved  an  exception.  Jesus 
Christ  said,  ^^I  am  the  light  of  the  world/' 
What  did  He  mean  by  that!  Before  I  went  to 
Cliina  I  would  have  interpreted  that  as  mean- 
ing the  light  that  comes  into  the  human  heart 
with  regeneration.  Perhaps  that  is  what  Jesus 
Christ  meant;  I  shall  not  attempt  an  exegesis 
of  the  passage.  As  we  have  seen,  it  means  the 
light  that  comes  into  the  darkened  mind  with 
intelligence.  Nay,  in  the  light  of  the  twentieth 
century  it  means  even  more  than  that.  It  means 
an  oil-lamp ;  for  the  non-Christian  world  up  to 
the  present  time  has  never  made  a  decent  oil- 
lamp.  If  they  never  made  an  oil-lamp,  they 
could  never  make  a  gas-light  or  an  electric  light 
or  an  acetylene  light  or  a  gasoline  light  or  an 
oxyhydric  light,  or  any  light  other  than  a  tal- 
low candle  or  a  dish  of  oil  with  a  wick  floating 
therein. 

Jesus  also  said  to  His  disciples,  ^  ^  Ye  are  the 
light  of  the  world."  And  every  kind  of  arti- 
ficial light,  that  is  worthy  the  name  of  light, 
that  the  world  has  to-day  has  been  made  by  the 
man  with  the  Bible,  by  the  man  who  has  been 
(developed  by  Christian  institutions.     And  so 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  CIVIC  LIFE  95 

now  on  each  side  of  those  great  macadamized 
streets  in  Peking  there  are  two  rows  of  incan- 
descent electric  lights,  with  great  arc  lights  at 
every  cross  street,  and  the  streets  of  Peking 
are  lit  as  well  as  the  streets  of  an  American  city 
at  niglit.  Is  not  Jesus  Christ  the  light  of  the 
world  in  a  bigger  way  than  the  world  has  ever 
yet  realized?  I  can  not  go  down  any  of  onr 
principal  streets  in  onr  great  cities  at  nights, 
with  their  electric  lights  and  electric  signs  flash- 
ing out  on  every  hand,  without  ejaculating: 
*^I  'm  the  light  of  the  world;  the  light  of  the 

world,     THE     LIGHT     OF     THE     WOKLD     is     JESUS 

CHRIST.''  I  have  heard  men  say  that  God 
could  not  say,  ^'Let  there  be  light,''  and  there 
was  light.  I  can  say  it ;  you  can  say  it ;  any  one 
can  say  it,  if  only  he  is  connected  with  a  mov- 
ing dynamo.  And  God  Almighty  is  the  dynamo 
Himself.  I  can  not  push  an  electric  button  or 
turn  on  an  electric  light— I  never  do — ^without 
rejDeating  to  myself,  ^^Let  there  be  light,  and 
there  was  light."  Oh,  what  a  mighty  God  He 
is,  and  what  a  mighty  gospel  He  has  placed  in 
our  lands ! 


CHAPTER  Vm 

LACK  OF  CHRISTIAN  INFLUENCE 

I  WISH  you  could  take  a  ride  with  me  in  a 
CMnese  cart.  I  do  not  think  you  would  want 
to  take  more  than  one;  but  one  is  interesting. 
We  always  take  our  friends  for  a  ride  in  a  na- 
tive cart  when  they  visit  us  in  Peking.  They 
never  forget  it. 

A  Chinese  cart  is  a  great  big  Saratoga  trunk 
on  two  wheels.  It  has  no  springs.  Why!  do 
you  ask  I  Because  the  non-Christian  world  has 
never  yet  made  a  spring  vehicle.  Now,  you 
eliminate  all  springs  from  your  life,  and  see 
how  much  of  your  comfort  is  gone.  Take  them 
off  your  bed,  your  chairs,  all  your  furniture, 
your  buggy,  your  wagon,  trolley  car,  railroad 
train,  automobile;  take  all  the  springs  out  of 
your  life  and  see  what  a  rough,  jolty  thing  life 
would  be.  And  so  I  add,  spring  vehicles  are 
by-products  of  the  gospel.  A  Chinese  cart 
has  no  springs.  It  has  no  seat.  You  sit  down 
tailor-fashion  on  the  bottom  of  the  cart.    Now, 

96 


LACK  OF  CHRISTIAN  INFLUENCE      97 

on  those  old  dirt  streets  or  roads— the  Chinese 
do  not  make  roads ;  the  cart  makes  the  road- 
there  would  be  a  rnt  on  this  side,  with  none  on 
that.     The  wheel  drops  into  the  rut,  and  you 
bump  your  head  on  this  side  of  the  cart.    Next 
there  is  a  rut  on  that  side ;  the  wheel  drops  in, 
and  you  bump  your  head  on  that  side  of  the 
cart.    Or  there  may  be  a  drain  across  the  road; 
both  wheels  drop  in  at  once,  and  the  jolt  makes 
you  wish  your  brain  was  placed  on  a  rubber 
cushion;  or,  finally,  the  mule  starts  suddenly— 
a  mule  always  does  what  you  are  not  expecting 
him  to  do ;  that  is  the  reason  why  he  is  a  mule, 
1  suppose — and  you  bump  your  head  on  the 
back  of  the  cart ;  and  when  you  get  home,  the 
only  thing  you  can  remember  of  your  cart  ride 
is  the  bumps. 

If  you  were  to  go  with  me  for  such  a  ride, 
1  would  take  you  as  I  did  Mr.  William  Jennings 
Bryan,  for  a  visit  to  Liu  Li  Chang,  the  book 
and  curio  street  of  Peking.  The  CHnese  are 
a  great  literature-loving  people,  and  have  been 
for  more  than  twenty-five  centuries,  and  the 
focal  point  of  all  their  literature  and  learning, 
insofar  as  it  is  contained  in  books,  is  this  one 
street;  for  practically  every  book  published  in 

7 


98     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

the  empire  can  be  found  here.  Let  me  try  to 
give  some  idea  of  the  extent  and  character  of 
their  literature. 

I  once  went  with  Dr.  Morrison,  that  wizard 
of  the  London  Times,  to  visit  Liu  Li  Chang.. 
He  wanted  to  secure  some  medical  books  and 
charts.  He  obtained  some  books  such  as  he 
thought  he  wanted,  and  finally  we  found  an 
anatomical  chart,  if  such  it  could  be  called ;  for 
it  was  only  an  outlme  of  the  human  body,  cov- 
ered all  over  with  black  spots,  making  it  look 
very  much  as  if  it  had  had  the  small-pox.  So 
many  of  the  Chinese  were  pock-marked  that  I 
could  not  refrain  from  suggesting  to  the  dealer 
in  a  joking  kind  of  way  that  the  chart  seemed 
to  have  ch'u  hua'rh  (blossomed  out),  the  Chi- 
nese term  when  referring  to  that  disease. 

**No,"  he  explained;  *Hhose  spots  mark  the 
places  where  it  is  safe  for  the  doctor  to  insert 
the  needle  in  treatment  by  acupuncture  with- 
out killing  the  patient.'' 

*  ^  May  I  ask, ' '  I  went  on,  ^ '  about  how  many 
patients  the  doctors  would  have  to  kill  in  mak- 
ing a  chart  like  this  before  they  discovered  all 
these  ten  thousand  safe  spots?" 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders,  as  though  that 


LACK  OF  CHRISTIAN  INFLUENCE      99 

were  not  a  part  of  his  business,  and  simply  an- 
swered, 

^'Pu  chih  tao'^ — I  do  not  know. 

He  showed  us  a  medical  encyclopedia  which 
a  prince  spent  thirty  years  in  preparing,  copied 
nine  times  with  his  own  hands,  and  it  contained 
twenty-one  thousand  prescriptions.  Prescrip- 
tions enough  in  all  conscience  to  cure  all  the  ills 
of  life.  But  when  a  Chinese  has  a  headache  he 
pastes  turnip  skins  on  his  temples  or  on  the 
sides  of  his  forehead  to  bring  the  ache  out. 
When  he  has  a  sore  throat  he  pinches  it  up 
and  down  the  two  sides  and  the  center  until 
it  is  black  and  blue,  in  order  that  by  counter- 
irritation  on  the  outside  he  may  cure  the  pain 
within.  He  still  has  a  sore  throat,  but  it  is  on 
the  outside.  In  the  same  way  he  often  pinches 
his  forehead  and  his  temples  when  turnip  or 
radish  skins  are  not  to  be  had. 

Treatment  by  acupuncture  is  not  an  out-of- 
date  method  by  the  Chinese.  Not  many  years 
ago  our  **boy,''  a  servant  who  had  been  with 
us  for  nine  years,  suddenly  fell  ill  with  cholera. 
The  American  doctor  was  summoned  at  once 
and  gave  him  a  dose  of  cholera  mixture.  It  did 
not  take  effect  at  once,  and  a  few  hours  after- 


100     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

ward,  as  my  wife  was  entering  the  compound, 
she  saw  the  **boy"  in  the  gatehouse,  where  a 
native  doctor  was  treating  him  to  a  **dose  of 
hatpin  under  the  tongue. '' 

Some  of  the  prescriptions  in  this  great  med- 
ical encyclopedia  consist  of  powdered  snakes' 
bones  and  tigers '  teeth  for  violent  diseases — on 
the  principle  that  virulent  diseases  require 
strong  remedies — a  principle  that  was  prac- 
tical by  our  o^ti  physicians  not  many  centuries 
ago.  Among  their  nurser>^  rhymes  I  found  one 
called  a  *^ Doctor's  Prescription,"  which,  of 
course,  is  only  a  child's  caricature  of  the  doctor. 
He  tells  us  that 

My  wife's  little  daughter  once  fell  very  ill, 

And  we  called  for  a  doctor  to  give  her  a  pill. 

He  wrote  a  prescription  which  now  we  will  give  her. 

In  which  he  has  ordered  a  mosquito's  liver. 

And  then,  in  addition,  the  heart  of  a  flea. 

And  half  pound  of  fly- wings  to  make  her  some  tea. 

So  far  as  I  know  the  Chinese  have  never  had 
any  medical  schools  similar  to  those  in  the 
West,  nor  any  native  medical  schools  like  those 
in  which  they  taught  the  Four  Books  and  Five 
Classics.  Any  one  who  had  an  aptitude  for  the 
study  of  medicine,  and  a  disposition  to  pre- 
scribe for  those  who  were  ill,  could  do  so,  and 


LACK  OF  CHRISTIAN  INFLUENCE    101 

not  infrequently  with  results  not  unlike  tliat  of 
the  grasshopper  referred  to  in  a  former  chap- 
ter. I  was  myself  acquainted  with  one  of  the 
court  painters,  who  was  drawing  a  stipend  as 
court  physician  as  well  as  artist.  Indeed,  it 
was  he  who  gave  my  friend  medicine  to  dissolve 
his  fishbone. 

Among  the  books  in  these  stores  we  will  find 
a  history  that  would  fill  a  two-horse  wagon. 
This  is  not  a  universal  history,  nor  a  history 
of  the  world,  nor  a  general  history  of  any  kind, 
but  simply  a  history  of  China.  Here,  again,  we 
may  find  an  encyclopedia  that  contains  as  many 
volumes  as  there  are  minutes  in  two  weeks. 
Among  their  poets  we  will  find  one  who  wrote 
as  many  separate  pieces  as  there  are  days  in 
a  hundred  years. 

When  the  commission  appointed  by  the  late 
empress  dowager  to  make  a  tour  of  the  world 
and  examine  the  constitutions  of  the  various 
governments  they  visited,  for  the  purpose  of 
advising  her  majesty  what  kind  would  be  the 
best  to  adopt  as  the  proposed  constitution  for 
China,  returned  to  Peking,  it  published  its  re- 
port in  one  hundred  and  twenty-seven  volumes. 
Such  are  some  of  the  large  ways  in  which  the 
Chinese  have  evinced  their  love  of  literature. 


102    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

In  a  former  cliapter  we  referred  to  tlie  fact 
that  no  non-Christian  people  have  ever  organ- 
ized their  thought  on  any  one  subject  into  a  sci- 
ence. "We  might  go  further  and  say  that  no 
Asiatic  people  have  ever  done  so.  Over  against 
this  statement  we  ought  to  place  another;  viz., 
that  none  of  the  world's  great  religions  orig- 
inated outside  of  Asia.  The  Asiatic  seems  to 
think  in  terms  of  the  universal,  the  European 
in  terms  of  the  particular.  The  mind  of  the 
Asiatic  is  telescopic;  that  of  the  European, 
microscopic.  The  Asiatic  deals  with  worlds 
and  gods  and  universes;  the  European  with 
atoms,  electrones,  and  microbes.  And  so  the 
Asiatic  has  given  the  world  all  its  great  reli- 
gions, while  the  European  has  given  it  all  its 
sciences. 

Of  the  world's  great  religions  the  Chinese 
have  originated  two,  adopted  two  others,  and 
are  being  rapidly  transformed  by  still  another. 
It  is  a  great  mistake,  therefore,  to  suppose  that 
the  Asiatic,  and  especially  the  Hindoos  and  the 
Chinese,  are  not  religious.  What  Paul  said  of 
the  Athenians  is  emphatically  true  of  the  Hin- 
doos and  the  Chinese ;  they  are  very  religious. 
There  are  probably  ten  times  as  many  temples 
and  shrines  in  Peking  as  there  are  churches  in 


LACK  OF  CHRISTIAN  INFLUENCE    103 

Chicago.  Almost  every  square  has  its  temple, 
and  every  home,  shop,  store,  and  even  well,  its 
shrine. 

Among  the  books  in  the  shops  on  Lin  Li 
Chang  is  one  called  the  Tao  Te  Ching,  written 
by  Lao-Tze,  the  founder  of  Taoism,  during  the 
sixth  century  before  the  Christian  era.  In  it 
we  find  the  highest  level  to  which  the  Chinese 
have  risen  in  their  statements  of  moral  or  re- 
ligious truth,  when  he  urges  his  followers  to 
** recompense  injury  with  kindness.^'  Even 
Confucius  himself  could  not  reach  this  level. 
"When  asked  by  his  disciples  what  he  thought 
of  Lao  Tze's  principle,  he  replied,  **Eecom- 
pense  kindness  with  kindness  and  injury  with 
justice. ' '  Like  many  teachers  of  our  own  time, 
he  was  willing  to  fall  below  a  contemporary 
in  principle  in  order  to  be  original  in  his  state- 
ment. 

La  the  Confucian  books  we  find  the  negative 
form  of  the  Golden  Eule,  often  wrongly  attrib- 
uted to  Confucius  as  its  author.  On  one  occa- 
sion the  master  in  conversation  with  one  of  his 
disciples  asked, 

**Tze,  what  is  your  principle  in  life?'^ 

To  which  the  disciple  answered,  probably 
quoting  a  proverb  of  his  times, 


104     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

**My  principle  in  life  is  not  to  do  to  others 
what  I  would  not  have  them  do  to  me."  A 
good  principle  for  a  man  to  hold,  and  one  which 
he  may  practice  all  his  life  without  doing  any- 
thing. It  is  only  negative  goodness.  It  is  when 
one  begins  to  do  to  others  as  he  would  have 
them  do  to  him  that  he  begins  to  be  positively 
good.  And  this  alone  might  account  for  the 
difference  in  the  results  of  the  teachings  of 
Confucius  and  Christ,  if  there  were  nothing 
else — though  there  is  something  else,  as  we 
shall  show  elsewhere. 

When  Mencius,  some  three  hundred  years 
before  Christ,  was  asked  by  his  prince  what 
principle  he  had  that  would  enable  him  to  gov- 
ern his  people  well,  Mencius  replied:  ^^I  have 
but  one  principle,  Eighteousness.  You  be 
righteous,  and  your  people  will  be  righteous.'' 
This,  again,  was  a  high  type  of  moral  or  re- 
ligious teaching  for  this  follower  of  Confucius. 

But  contemporaneous  with  Mencius  there 
was  another  teacher,  independent  of  both  Tao- 
ism and  Confucianism,  named  Mo  Tzu,  or  Mi- 
cius.  We  have  preserv^ed  among  his  writings 
a  whole  chapter  on  ^  ^  Universal  Mutual  Love. ' ' 
He  tells  us  that  if  every  prince  loved  everj^ 
other  prince  as  he   loves  himself,   no   prince 


LACK  OF  CHRISTIAN  INFLUENCE    105 

would  make  war  upon  any  other  for  the  pur- 
pose of  enriching  himself.  If  a  father  loved 
his  son,  and  the  son  his  father;  if  a  mother 
loved  her  daughter,  and  a  daughter  her  mother ; 
if  neighbor  loved  neighbor  as  he  loves  himself ; 
if,  in  a  word — for  he  goes  on  in  this  strain 
throughout  the  entire  chapter — if  everybody 
loved  everybody  else  as  he  loves  himself,  no- 
body would  injure  anybody  else  for  the  purpose 
of  benefiting  himself,  and  so  all  the  ills  of  life 
would  be  cured  if  only  everybody  exercised 
universal  mutual  love.'' 

Now,  when  Mencius's  disciples  asked  him 
what  he  thought  of  Motze's  principle  of  loving 
everybody  else  as  one  loves  himself,  he  an- 
swered, '^It  would  bring  us  into  the  state  of 
the  beasts. ' '  They  have  no  more  love  for  their 
progenitors  than  they  have  for  any  other  ani- 
mals, and  hence  we  would  be  no  better  than  they 
are  if  we  did  not  love  our  parents  better  than 
we  loved  anybody  else. 

Again,  and  this  is  the  last  of  these  high 
moral  principles  of  Chinese  literature  to  which 
I  wish  to  call  your  attention,  there  was,  contem- 
poraneous with  the  Apostle  Paul,  a  Chinese 
woman  who  wrote  the  first  book  that  was  ever 
written  in  any  language  for  the  instruction  of 


106     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

girls.  It  now  constitutes  the  first  of  the  ' '  Four 
Books  for  Girls,"  and  in  it  she  says,  ^* First 
others,  then  yourself;''  equivalent  to  our  own, 
^^ Always  prefer  others  rather  than  yourself." 
All  of  these  books,  with  their  good  moral  prin- 
ciples, can  be  secured  in  these  bookshops  of 
Liu  Li  Chang,  and  will  give  us  some  idea  of  the 
quality  of  this  class  of  Chinese  literature. 
Touch  the  Chinese  on  science,  and  they  are 
weak;  touch  them  on  morality,  and  they  are 
decidedly  strong;  stronger,  I  think,  than  any 
other  non-Christian  people  the  world  has  ever 
developed.  So  far  as  I  know,  not  even  the  Hin- 
doos have  given  statement  to  so  many  of  the 
highest  moral  principles  as  embodied  in  the 
Christian  system  as  have  the  Chinese. 

The  question  naturally  arises,  if  all  that  I 
have  said  is  true,  and  our  progress  is  the  cause 
of  our  religion,  and  the  Chinese  have  all  the 
great  moral  principles  that  we  have,  why  did 
they  not  make  equal  progress?  To  answer  this 
question  it  will  be  necessary  to  consider  the 
Chinese  systems  of  religion,  remembering  that 
morality  and  religion,  as  we  shall  show  in  an- 
other chapter,  spring  from  different  states  of 
the  mind. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA 

The  first  and  most  revered  of  the  religions  of 
China  is  Confucianism.  It  is  the  outgrowth  of 
the  teachings  of  Confucius.  It  is  a  worship,  but 
not  a  religion;  a  worship  of  genius,  but  not  a 
worship  of  God.  Neither  priest  nor  idol  is 
found  in  a  Confucian  temple.  Every  man  is 
his  own  priest,  and  his  only  object  of  worship 
is  an  ancestor,  an  emperor,  a  statesman,  a 
scholar,  or  a  soldier.  Every  home  of  any  im- 
portance has  its  ancestral  tablets.  These  are 
small  pieces  of  board  fashioned  after  the  style 
of  a  tombstone,  on  which  the  name  of  the  ances- 
tor is  written  or  carved.  To  these  homage  is 
offered,  and  this  homage  may  be  translated 
either  worship  or  respect.  The  first  objection 
an  official  will  offer  to  joining  the  Christian 
Church  is  that  it  does  not  approve  of  the  wor- 
ship of  ancestors. 

My  assistant  pastor,  Mr.  Liu  Mark,  gave 
tip  his  salary  as  a  preax^her,  asking  to  be  al- 
io? 


108    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

lowed  to  preach  for  nothing  and  teach  English 
in  an  official 's  family  for  his  living.  He  taught 
the  sons  of  the  official,  and  not  infrequently 
both  father  and  sons  conversed  with  him  about 
his  religion.  On  one  occasion  the  father  said 
to  him, 

**My  only  objection  to  your  religion  is  that 
you  do  not  worship  your  ancestors." 

*'And  why  do  you  object  on  that  account?" 
asked  Mark. 

**  Because  I  think  everybody  should  wor- 
ship his  ancestors, ' '  replied  the  official. 

*^You  worship  your  ancestors,  I  suppose?" 
said  Mark,  interrogatively. 

''Most  assuredly,  I  do,"  he  replied. 

''Which  of  your  ancestors  do  you  wor- 
ship?" asked  Mark. 

*'My  father,  my  grandfather,  and  my  great- 
grandfather," he  answered. 

''None  of  them  further  back  than  your 
great-grandfather?"  asked  Mark. 

"I  do  not  know  them  any  farther  back,"  he 
replied. 

"And  how  will  they  feel?"  asked  Mark. 
"Will  they  not  feel  unhappy  that  their  sons 
and  grandsons  are  worshiped,  while  they  are 
not?" 


THE  RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  109 

'^Mei  hsiang  tao"—l  never  thought  of  that 
' — replied  his  excellency. 

*^Now,  do  you  not  see!"  said  Mark,  ^'that, 
no  matter  how  many  of  your  ancestors  you 
worship,  their  will  still  be  others  that  you  do 
not,  and  that  it  is  impossible  to  get  a  perfect 
worship  unless  you  go  back  and  worship  the 
one  God  and  Father  of  us  all,  and  thus  you 
honor  all  your  ancestersf 

The  official  never  offered  any  further  objec- 
tions to  Mark's  religion,  but  allowed  one  of  his 
sons  to  join  the  Church. 

"When  the  great  official  Li  Hung-chang  died, 
a  temple  was  erected  for  his  worship  (not  sim- 
ply in  his  memory)  in  Peking,  another  in  his 
native  place,  and  still  others  in  other  great 
cities.  Every  official  or  scholar  who  succeeded 
in  winning  great  fame  may  have  at  least  one 
temple  erected  for  his  worship,  that  in  his  na- 
tive city  or  village,  or  in  the  place  where  he 
won  his  laurels.  In  Shanhaikuan,  where  the 
Great  "Wall  enters  the  sea,  there  is  a  temple 
erected  in  memory  of  Wu  San-kuei,  the  general 
who  succeeded  in  keeping  the  Manchus  out  until 
he  asked  them  to  come  and  help  him  drive  out 
the  rebel  who  had  overthrown  the  Ming  dy- 


110     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

nasty.  A  similar  temple  is  in  Changli,  for  the 
worship  of  the  great  statesman  and  philosopher 
Han  Yii,  and  almost  every  city  and  village  has 
some  temple  erected  for  the  worship  of  some 
one  of  its  own  great  sons. 

Confucius  was  born  551  B.  C.  He  was  a 
moralist  only,  and  not  a  religionist.  His  con- 
cern was  man's  relation  to  man,  and  not  man's 
relation  to  God.  AVhen  asked  about  God,  he 
answered,  ^  ^  I  do  not  know  man ;  how  can  I  know 
Godf  "When  asked  about  the  existence  of  the 
soul  after  death,  he  replied,  ' '  We  know  not  life ; 
how  can  we  know  death?"  "When  asked  what 
he  thought  of  Lao  Tze's  teaching,  to  '^recom- 
pense injury  with  kindness,''  he  replied,  '^ Rec- 
ompense kindness  with  kindness,  and  injury 
with  justice." 

The  negative  form  of  the  Golden  Rule, 
which  is  usually  attributed  to  Confucius,  did 
not  originate  with  him,  nor  was  he  the  first  to 
give  it  expression.  On  one  occasion  he  asked 
a  disciple,  *'Tze,  what  is  your  rule  of  con- 
duct?" 

**My  rule  of  conduct,"  answered  the  dis- 
ciple, *'is  not  to  do  to  others  what  I  would  not 
have  them  do  to  me. ' ' 


THE  RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  111 

' '  Tze, ' '  answered  the  master, ' '  you  have  not 
yet  attained  to  that.'' 

In  estimating  Confucianism  we  should  re- 
member that  Confucius  made  no  pretensions  to 
divine  help,  power,  or  revelation.  He  taught 
men  as  a  man,  and  taught  only  about  life.  He 
made  no  pretensions  to  do  what  he  could  not, 
or  to  know  what  he  did  not  know.  As  a  man 
he  has  had  a  greater  and  better  influence  upon 
more  people  than  any  other  man  that  has  ever 
lived.  And  the  Chinese  people,  the  greatest  non- 
Christian  nation  the  world  has  ever  developed, 
are  more  the  result  of  the  influence  of  Confucius 
than  of  any  other  person.  He  gathered  up  and 
edited  the  best  literature  of  the  past,  and  made 
a  set  of  classics  which  are  pure  in  tone  and 
which  have  served  the  Chinese  as  a  course  of 
study  for  twenty-four  centuries.  That  some 
later  scholar  did  not  prepare  a  better  course  is 
no  reflection  on  the  sage. 

But  Confucius  was  not  a  deep  thinker.  He 
was  simply  a  pedagogue.  He  struck  a  surface 
depth  which  is  easy  to  understand,  and  hence 
could  become  popular.  If  Confucius  had  gone 
deeper  his  influence  would  have  been  narrower. 
Turn  from  Lao  Tze  or  Chuang  Tze  to  Confu- 


112     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

cius,  and  it  is  like  turning  from  Plato  or  Aris- 
totle to  Socrates.  One  can  not  but  wish  that, 
instead  of  turning  the  face  of  China  to  the  past, 
he  had  turned  it  to  the  future,  and  that,  in- 
stead of  turning  men's  thoughts  manward  only, 
he  had  directed  them  Godward.  But  the  sage 
did  a  noble  work,  and  it  remains  for  the  * '  Man 
of  Galilee*'  to  do  what  the  man  of  Lu  could  not. 
Confucius  inspired  the  peoples  of  Easteim  Asia 
in  a  pursuit  of  the  intellectual  just  as  Jesus 
Christ  has  inspired  the  peoples  of  Western 
Europe  in  the  pursuit  of  the  spiritual,  and  has 
received  the  same  kind  of  homage. 

Buddhism. — In  the  year  65  A.  D.  the  Em- 
peror Ming  Ti  had  a  dream  in  which  he  dreamed 
that  a  prophet  had  arisen  in  the  West.  Under 
the  leadership  of  a  prince,  his  brother,  he 
formed  a  company  of  eighteen  officials  and  sent 
them  west  to  search  for  the  prophet.  This  was 
about  the  time  Paul  was  writing  his  second 
epistle  to  Timothy ;  and  one  can  not  but  wonder 
what  would  haVe  happened  if  Paul  and  some  of 
the  Epistles  and  Gospels,  with  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, had  been  found  by  this  delegation.  But 
God  pity  us  if  they  had  found  Paul  and  taken 
him  to  China  instead  of  allowing  him  to  come 
to  Europe! 


THE  RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  113 

They  went  to  India.  There  they  found  some 
Buddhist  books  and  priests,  and  carried  them 
with  some  idols  back  to  China;  and  thus  Bud- 
dhism was  introduced  into  the  middle  kingdom. 
And  the  Chinese  say,  **0f  all  sinners  Ming  Ti 
was  the  greatest.'' 

As  a  matter  of  fact  Buddhism  supplied  what 
Confucianism  lacks — a  hope  of  a  future  life; 
and  this  is  the  reason  why  Buddhism  has  got- 
ten such  a  strong  hold  upon  the  people.  Of 
course,  it  is  implied  in  the  worship  of  ancestors 
that  the  spirits  of  the  ancestors  still  exist,  else 
why  worship  them!  But  the  hope  is  indefinite. 
So  when  Buddhism  was  brought  in,  with  her 
nirvana  and  her  transmigrations,  there  was 
something  to  feed  the  hope  of  the  bereaved 
ones. 

Buddhism,  however,  brought  nothing  which 
corresponds  to  the  Chinese  classics  or  the  Bible 
as  an  educative  force;  and  the  system  of  reli- 
gion which  does  not  foster  education  must 
surely  die.  One  need  only  follow  the  history 
of  the  Christian  Church  where  the  people  are 
kept  in  ignorance  and  subjection,  to  understand 
the  force  of  this  remark. 

Buddhism  undertook  to  do  with  priests,  tem- 
3 


114    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

pies,  worship,  and  idols  what  Confucianism  un- 
dertook to  do  with  schools.  Every  nook  and 
comer  of  the  universe  was  inhabited  by  a  spirit, 
and  Buddhism  put  an  idol — gold,  silver,  bronze, 
stone,  wood,  clay,  paper — ^wherever  it  could  be 
placed,  from  the  kitchen  and  the  front  gate  to 
the  housetop  and  the  well,  and  gave  the  people 
something  to  fear  and  to  worship  everywhere. 
But  they  did  nothing  to  increase  the  intelligence 
of  the  people.  The  temples  are  dirty,  the 
priests  are  filthy  and  ignorant  and  foul. 

"  And  if  the  priests  be  foul  In  whom  we  trust. 
What  wonder  is  it  a  lewd  man  should  rust  ?" 

The  people  affect  to  despise  them,  whether  they 
do  or  not;  but  when  death  comes  to  a  home, 
both  Buddhist  and  Taoist  priests  are  called  in 
to  chant  their  litanies  and  say  their  prayers, 
for,  not  knowing  which  may  be  right  or  which 
wrong,  they  prefer  to  consult  them  all. 

At  New  Year's  time  the  Chinese  burn  a 
kitchen  god.  But  before  doing  so  they  smear 
his  mouth  with  molasses,  so  that  he  will  not  re^ 
port  any  but  sweet  things  about  them  when  he 
reaches  heaven.  When  friends  die,  they  make 
all  kinds  of  paper  houses,  rolls  of  paper  silk, 


THE  RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  115 

carts,  horses,  sedan  chairs,  servants,  money, 
even  cards  and  dice,  if  they  were  fond  of  play- 
ing, and  bnm  them  in  a  bonfire,  that  the  de- 
parted one  may  have  them  in  the  spirit  world. 
Each  year  they  place  silvered  paper  on  the 
grave  as  an  annual  allowance  for  the  spirit. 

Mrs.  Headland  once  said  to  a  princess  who 
had  prepared  these  things  for  her  mother-in- 
law, 

*^Yon  do  not  think  that  her  spirit  will  want 
dice,  or  cards,  or  the  chair  in  which  she  was 
borne  as  a  cripple,  do  yon?" 

'*I  do  not  know  what  she  may  want,"  re- 
plied the  princess,  ^^but  it  is  a  comfort  to  us 
to  do  for  her  anything  that  she  liked  when  here, 
and  so  we  prepare  these  things." 

And  so  they  prepare  all  these  usefully  use- 
less things  just  as  we  put  flowers  on  the  casket 
or  on  the  grave.  Human  nature  and  human 
sorrow  and  human  needs  are  the  same  all  over 
the  world. 

But  the  idol  that  is  most  worshipped  of  any 
in  China  is  the  goddess  of  Mercy.  There  are 
some  who  think  that  this  is  the  Virgin  Mary, 
carried  to  China  by  the  Nestorians  from  500  to 
800  A.  D.,  adopted  by  the  Buddhists,  and  in- 


116     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

eluded  in  their  pantheon.  She  is  certainly  not 
a  Hindoo  goddess,  as  she  has  neither  the  fea- 
tures nor  the  figure  of  the  idols  brought  from 
that  countiy. 

Taoism  (pronounced  Dow-ism)  is  the  out- 
growth of  the  teachings  of  Lao  Tze,  who  was 
an  old  man  when  Confucius  began  his  teaching. 
The  highest  expression  of  moral  teaching  ever 
reached  by  the  Chinese  was  reached  by  Lao  Tze 
in  his  ^^ recompense  injury  with  kindness." 
Confucius  once  visited  him,  but  was  unable  to 
comprehend  his  teaching. 

Lao  Tze  wrote  a  book  called  the  '*Tao  Te 
Ching,"  the  classic  or  Bible  of' the  Taoists.  It 
is  a  small  book  of  only  about  five  thousand 
words.  The  word  Tao  means  way,  Te  means 
virtue;  and  so  it  has  been  called  the  ^'Classic 
of  the  Way  and  of  Virtue."  His  own  explana- 
tion of  the  Way  is  so  complicated  that  no  critics 
thus  far  have  been  able  to  comprehend  it.  The 
same  expression,  Tao,  is  used  for  Word  in  the 
first  chapter  of  John's  Gospel,  *'In  the  begin- 
ning was  the  Word/' 

The  chief  teaching  of  Lao  Tze  and  his  early 
followers  is,  *  ^  Do  nothing,  and  all  things  will  be 
done;"  a  doctrine  of  inactivity.    It  is  worthjj 


THE  RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  117 

of  note  that  China's  greatest  philosopher, 
Chnang  Tze,  a  contemporary  of  Aristotle,  was 
Lao  Tze's  most  distinguished  disciple. 

Once,  when  Chuang  Tze's  disciples  were 
conversing  as  to  what  kind  of  a  funeral  they 
should  give  their  master,  he,  overhearing  them, 
said, 

*^Give  me  no  funeral  at  all;  just  throw  me 
out." 

*^But,"  they  objected,  *^the  birds  will  eat 
yon." 

**Bury  me,"  he  answered,  *^and  the  worms 
will  eat  me.  You  rob  the  birds  to  feed  the 
worms." 

The  Taoists  began  experimenting  as  alche- 
mists some  two  or  three  centuries  before  Christ, 
and  were  the  natural  scientists  of  the  times. 
Their  search  was  for  the  elixir  of  life.  It  was 
in  this  way  that  they  discovered  gunpowder. 
The  great  officials  of  the  times  despised  this 
search  for  the  elixir  of  life ;  but  Chin  Shih  Hu- 
ang, the  emperor  who  built  the  Great  Wall, 
and  some  of  his  successors  were  anxious  to  get 
the  elixir  of  life,  and,  of  course,  there  were  al- 
ways fakirs  to  find  it  for  them.  On  one  occa- 
sion one  of  these  Taoists  brought  a  dose  to 


118     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

the  emperor.  An  old  official,  who  was  present 
when  it  was  brought,  drank  it.  The  emperor 
threatened  to  put  him  to  death. 

*'That  is  impossible,  Yonr  Majesty,"  said 
the  official. 

**What  do  you  mean!"  asked  the  emperor. 

**I  have  taken  a  dose  of  the  elixir  of  life," 
answered  the  official. 

**That  shall  not  save  you,"  said  the  ruler. 

**If  it  can  not  save  me,"  asked  the  official, 
*'what  is  the  use  of  Your  Majesty  taking  it?" 
And  his  wit  saved  his  life. 

This  pandering  to  the  wants  of  others  has 
been  a  characteristic  of  the  Taoists  throughout 
their  history.  They  began  to  adopt  the  gods 
of  the  Buddhists  and  add  them  to  their  own; 
and  this  they  continued  to  do  until  their  pan- 
theon is  equal  to  that  of  the  Buddhists. 

Lao  Tze  left  China,  so  the  story  goes,  riding 
upon  a  cow.  As  he  was  going  out  of  the  north- 
west pass,  the  gatekeeper  made  him  stop  and 
write  a  book,  the  *^Tao  Te  Ching,"  before  he 
would  let  him  through.  As  he  never  returned, 
he  was  supposed  to  have  sublimated  and  gone 
to  the  celestial  regions,  where  he  holds  meetings 
with  the  best  of  his  followers  until  the  present 


THE  RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  119 

time.  Eight  of  the  greatest  of  his  disciples  are 
called  the  Eight  Immortals.  One  of  these  is 
**Liof  the  Iron  Staff.'' 

Li  is  said  on  one  occasion  to  have  gone  in 
spirit  to  a  meeting  with  Lao  Tze,  leaving  his 
body  in  charge  of  a  disciple.  The  mother  of 
the  latter  died  before  Li  returned,  and  he  was 
forced  to  leave  the  body  to  go  and  bury  his  par- 
ent; so  that  when  Li  returned,  his  body  had  be- 
gun to  decay.  ("^^Hiy  it  would  not  decay  while 
the  disciple  was  watching  it,  does  not  concern 
the  Chinese.)  When  Li  returned  and  found 
his  body  in  a  state  of  putrefaction,  he  looked 
about  and  saw  the  body  of  a  lame  beggar  from 
which  the  spirit  had  just  departed,  and,  slip- 
ping into  that,  he  has  been  hobbling  about  on 
an  iron  staff  ever  since.  Most  of  the  Chinese 
fairy  tales  are  connected  with  Taoism. 

About  the  third  or  fourth  century  of  our 
era  there  was  a  war  for  supremacy  between 
these  three  religions.  The  Buddhists  built 
temples  and  decorated  them  with  their  idols. 
The  Taoists  built  temples  too,  and  decorated 
them  with  pictures  of  their  gods  and  their  im- 
mortals. The  Confucianists  built  schools  and 
decorated  them  with  paintings  of  the  great  men 


no    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

of  the  past.  This  continued  for  several  centu- 
ries. Sometimes  one  would  lead  in  popular  fa- 
vor, and  sometimes  another.  Taoism  was  al- 
ways ready  to  adopt  a  god  or  a  genius,  if  by 
so  doing  she  could  win  the  hearts  of  the  people. 
It  was  in  this  way  that  Chinese  art  took  its  rise ; 
so  that  art  in  Asia,  as  in  Europe,  was  developed 
in  connection  with  religion. 

What  these  three  religions  undertook  to  do 
for  Cliina,  Christianity  did  for  Europe  and 
America.  Confucianism  undertook  to  develop 
the  intellectual  life  of  the  people.  This  it  did 
in  a  very  imperfect  way.  It  furnished  a  system 
of  study  which,  with  the  learning  of  the  Chi- 
nese language,  has  produced  a  greater  memory 
development  in  the  Chinese  than  in  any  other 
people  in  the  world ;  but  it  left  the  thinking  fa- 
cilities, such  as  reason  and  invention,  practi- 
cally dormant.  Contrast  the  old  educational  sys- 
tem of  Confucianism  with  the  great  university, 
college,  and  public-school  system  of  Europe  and 
America,  and  we  can  readilv  see  what  a  failure 
Confucianism  has  been  at  its  strongest  point. 
Or,  if  we  question  its  failure,  we  only  need  to 
remember  that  the  Chinese  themselves  have 
given  up   the  old   Confucian   system  for  the 


THE  RELIGIONS  OF  CHINA  121 

Cliristian  system,  even  adopting  every  seventh 
day  as  a  day  of  rest. 

Buddhism  undertook  to  furnish  the  Chinese 
with  a  system  of  worship  and  a  hope  for  the 
life  beyond.  In  this  she  also  has  failed.  No 
Chinese  scholar  will  admit  that  he  is  a  Bud- 
dhist. The  people  as  a  whole  do  not  admit  that 
Buddhism  as  a  system  is  worthy  of  their  re- 
spect. They  seek  the  priests  as  a  last  resort, 
but  from  childhood  they  have  no  respect  for 
the  priests,  and  ridicule  them  in  their  play  and 
in  their  nursery  rhymes,  as  witness  the  follow- 
ing: 

Pat-a-cake,  pat-a-cake,  little  girl  fair. 

There  's  a  priest  in  the  temple  without  any  hair, 

You  take  a  tile  and  I  '11  take  a  brick, 

And  we  '11  hit  the  priest  in  the  back  of  the  neck. 

Taoism  undertook  to  furnish  the  Chinese 
with  a  system  of  science.  She  experimented  as 
in  alchemy.  She  tried  astrology.  She  under- 
took to  explain  the  laws  of  nature.  But  all  her 
efforts  have  resulted  in  nothing  more  than 
Feng  shua:  demonology,  soothsaying,  and  nec- 
romancy. And  now,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  centur}^,  the  Chinese  people  have 
opened  all  doors  to  the  learning,  the  science, 


122    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

and  the  religion  of  the  West,  and  are  sending 
their  brightest  pupils  to  be  educated  in  Europe 
and  America.  Nay,  she  is  even  sending  her 
princes  and  her  highest  officials  to  learn  about 
the  Christian  countries,  that  she  may  adopt  a 
system  of  government  that  has  never  been  de- 
veloped by  any  but  a  Christian  people. 


CHAPTER  X 

BY-PRODUCTS  IN  INTELLECTUAL 
DEVELOPMENT 

Fkom  what  we  have  seen  of  the  Chinese  systems 
of  religion,  we  are  driven  to  the  conclusion  that 
they  have  failed.  They  have  done  what  they 
could,  hut  they  are  man-made  systems,  and  they 
can  but  do  a  man-made  system 's  work.  No  peo- 
ple can  rise  higher  than  their  religion.  Con- 
fucius and  Mencius,  Lao  Tze  and  Mo  Tze,  and 
the  other  noble  men  who  worked  with  and  who 
came  after  them,  have  raised  China  up  to  their 
own  level,  the  level  of  a  man;  and  there  they 
must  stop  until  a  longer  lever  with  a  greater 
purchase  and  power  is  placed  under  her. 

That  power,  as  we  have  seen,  is  not  Taoism, 
Confucianism,  Buddhism,  nor  Mohammedan- 
ism. These  have  all  been  tried.  They  have  had 
their  chance  for  from  twelve  to  twenty-three 
centuries,  and  they  have  confessedly  failed. 
What  shall  be  done  now?    Shall  we  withdraw 

123 


124     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

and  say  China  is  hopeless?  Shall  we  say  no 
people  has  any  right  to  offer  their  religion  to 
any  other  people!  or  shall  we  send  onr  mission- 
aries with  the  message  of  the  Master — a  mes- 
sage of  salvation,  of  healing,  and  of  intelligence 
— and  see  what  that  will  do?  Jesus  Christ  as 
He  came  to  this  world  was  especially  designed 
as  a  Savior  of  men,  of  all  men,  and  of  the  whole 
man — physically,  mentally,  morally,  spiritually ; 
and  the  message  which  He  has  left  us,  if 
rightly  interpreted  and  applied,  can  not  but 
bring  about  the  same  results  among  the  people 
of  other  nations  and  races  as  it  has  among  our 
own. 

I  was  talking  with  an  eminent  psychologist 
not  long  since^ — one  of  the  new  psychologists, 
who  do  a  tremendous  amount  of  experimenting 
with  the  brain,  the  nerves,  the  eye,  ear,  nose, 
throat,  taste,  touch;  a  physiological  psycholo- 
gist,  or  a  psychological  physiologist,  or  what- 
ever we  may  term  the  new  psychologists,  but 
certainly  a  master  in  his  own  line  of  work — 
and  during  the  conversation  I  said  to  him: 

^'I  suppose  you  will  admit  that  the  human 
brain  is  the  highest  type  of  physical  creation; 
will  you  notr' 


INTELLECTUAL  DEVELOPMENT      125 

'  ^  Certainly, ' '  lie  replied ;  *  *  we  all  hold  that. ' ' 

*^You  believe,  as  we  all  do,  that  the  body  is 
only  the  house  in  which  the  real  man  lives — the 
tools  with  which  he  works;  do  you  notT'  I 
went  on. 

**Yes,''  he  replied. 

**Bnt  this  house  is  important,  and  these 
tools  are  essential  to  his  development." 

*^Very  few  people,''  he  answered,  '*have 
any  conception  of  the  complicated  mechanism 
of  the  human  body.'' 

**I  suppose,  also,  that  you  admit,"  I  con- 
tinued, ^^that  somehow  connected  with  this 
brain  there  is  a  thinking  man — an  intellectual 
man." 

^^Certainlyldo." 

**Well,  now,  will  you  admit  that  reason  is 
to  the  thinking  man  about  what  the  brain  is  to 
the  physical  naan — the  highest  faculty,  the  most 
intricate  and  complicated  of  the  thinking 
powers,  and  the  most  difficult  to  develop?" 

**Yes,"  he  replied,  ^'the  memory  is  simple 
and  easily  developed ;  a  kind  of  a  storehouse  for 
facts.  The  imagination  runs  riot  even  in  a 
child.  But  the  reason  does  not  appear  until 
later  in  life,  and  it  requires  the  solution  of  a 


126     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

long  list  and  a  great  variety  of  problems  for 
its  development.'* 

'  ^  And  what  would  yon  say  the  reason  or  the 
thinking  man  deals  with?"  I  asked. 

*^ Things,''  he  replied,  without  hesitation. 
*^The  thinking  man  relates  us  to  the  world  and 
the  things  of  the  world.'' 

**Does  it  not  relate  us  to  laws?" 

*^To  laws  as  things,  again  I  answer,  yes. 
We  think  about  laws  as  things,"  he  replied. 

**Does  it  not  relate  us  to  man?"  I  asked, 
further. 

**To  man  as  a  thing,  yes,"  he  replied;  *'but 
not  to  man  as  a  moral  being." 

*  *  And  how  are  we  related  to  man  as  a  moral 
being?"  I  inquired  again. 

**By  our  moral  nature,"  he  replied. 

*^What  do  you  mean  by  our  moral  nature?" 
I  asked. 

**I  mean,"  he  went  on  to  explain,  ''that  man 
is  a  moral  being  as  well  as  an  intellectual  being. 
That  he  has  a  moral  nature  that  is  as  distinct 
from  his  intellectual  nature  as  it  is  from  his 
spiritual  nature,  and  that  he  has  moral  faculties 
just  as  he  has  intellectual  faculties." 

*'What  do  you  mean  by  moral  faculties?" 
I  inquired. 


INTELLECTUAL  DEVELOPMENT       127 

^^What  do  you  mean  by  intellectual  facul- 
ties!'' he  asked,  in  return. 

*^I  mean  powers  of  the  mind  that  have  cer- 
tain definite  functions,  or  states  of  the  mind 
when  it  does  certain  definite  work,"  I  replied. 

* '  That  is  exactly  what  I  mean  by  moral  fac- 
ulties," he  answered. 

**You  mean,"  I  asked,  *'that  conscience  is 
to  the  moral  man  what  reason  is  to  the  thinking 
man?" 

' '  Exactly.  Conscience  is  just  as  truly  a  fac- 
ulty or  state  of  the  mind  as  reason ;  has  just  as 
definite  functions,  and  is  as  capable  of  develop- 
ment by  the  same  laws  and  methods,"  he  as- 
serted. 

'  ^  I  am  not  sure  that  I  understand  what  you 
mean,"  I  answered. 

*^Man  is  a  trinity,"  he  explained,  ''without 
any  reference  to  his  physical  nature.  The  psy- 
chical part  is  threefold.  The  lowest  of  these 
three  is  the  intellectual  or  thinking  man,  with 
all  his  faculties  and  powers.  To  develop  the 
reason,  we  have  definite  studies,  such  as  the  va^ 
rious  departments  of  mathematics.  Above  the 
thinking  man  we  have  the  moral  man,  and  con- 
science is  to  the  moral  man  what  reason  is  to 


128     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

the  thinking  man.  It  is  just  as  much  a  faculty 
as  reason,  and  is  capable  of  development  by  the 
same  laws  and  exercises;  and  yet,  unfortu- 
nately, we  do  not  have,  in  a  single  college  or 
university  in  the  world,  so  far  as  I  know,  a  sys- 
tem of  study  that  is  designed  to  develop  con- 
science as  mathematics  develops  reason/' 

^  ^  You  think,  then,  that  our  system  of  educa- 
tion is  defective,"  I  suggested. 

*^It  is  incomplete,''  he  answered.  ^'We 
have  been  spending  all  our  energy  thus  far  on 
the  development  of  our  intellectual  nature,  with- 
out paying  any  attention  to  our  moral  faculties. 
What  we  want  is  a  moral  mathematics — a  study 
which  will  do  for  conscience  and  the  moral  na- 
ture what  mathematics  does  for  reason.'* 

^'That  would  be  difficult  to  make,  would  it 
not?"  I  objected. 

^  ^  Arithmetic,  algebra,  geometry,  trigonom- 
etry, calculus,  and  the  various  other  mathemat- 
ical studies  were  not  easy  to  make,  but  we  made 
them.  We  can  make  anything  we  are  interested 
enough  to  imdertake.  Most  of  us  have  never 
even  thought  of  the  necessity  of  such  a  study." 

^^How  would  you  undertake  to  make  such  a 
study?"  I  asked. 


INTELLECTUAL  DEVELOPMENT       129 

''I  am.  not  certain  that  I  know,'*  Le  an- 
swered. '*It  would  probably  have  to  be  a  prac- 
tical application  of  a  good  many  things  that  we 
already  know.  It  might  be  that  after  we  had 
taught  the  students  certain  things  they  would 
be  sent  out  to  do  them  a  la  Squeers.  It  might 
be  that  students  would  be  held  responsible  for 
and  examined  in  their  conduct  toward  their  fel- 
low-students and  their  teacher  as  carefully  as 
in  their  books." 

' '  You  mean  that  it  would  be  a  science  of  our 
relations  one  with  another?"  T  asked. 

*^ Certainly,"  he  replied.  ^^As  our  intellec- 
tual nature  relates  us  to  things,  our  moral  na- 
ture relates  us  to  our  fellow-men.  Conscience, 
our  moral  faculty,  enables  us  to  distinguish  be- 
tween right  and  wrong  and  urges  us  to  do  the 
right  and  avoid  the  wrong.  The  way  to  de- 
velop one's  arm  is  to  use  one's  arm;  the  way  to 
develop  one's  reason  is  to  use  one's  reason; 
so,  on  the  same  principle,  the  way  to  develop 
one's  conscience  is  not  only  to  know  what  we 
ought  to  do,  but  to  do  what  we  ought  to  do." 

^'Our  educational  system,  as  it  stands  to- 
day, then,  is  very  incomplete,"  I  suggested. 

'^In  so  far  as  a  thorough  education  is  con- 

9 


130     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

cemed,  most  assuredly, ' '  lie  answered.  ^  ^  Wlien 
we  have  passed  the  schools  we  are  only  one- 
third  developed.  Our  moral  nature  and  our 
spiritual  nature  still  lie  dormant,  except  as  they 
have  been  helped  by  the  Church  or  by  home  in- 
struction. Most  of  the  schools  pay  no  atten- 
tion to  the  moral  and  spiritual  development  of 
the  students,  though  these,  or  either  of  them, 
is  of  more  importance  than  the  education  of 
the  intellect,  while  both  of  them  are  totally  dis- 
regarded by  the  schools." 

^^Is  not  your  statement  too  strong?" 

''What  statement!" 

''You  say  that  the  moral  faculties  are  of 
more  importance  than  the  intellectual  faeal- 
ties,"  I  added. 

"Are  they  not!"  he  asked. 

"I  have  always  thought  of  the  intellectual 
development  as  being  the  most  important  of 
all, ' '  I  said. 

"So  have  most  people,"  he  added,  "and 
that  is  where  the  trouble  lies.  But  is  our  rela- 
tion to  things  as  important  as  our  relation  to 
our  fellow-men!  Is  it  as  important  that  I  un- 
derstand the  law  of  gravitation,  or  that  I  can 
operate  the  laws  of  electricity  or  steam,  as  it  is 


INTELLECTUAL  DEVELOPMENT      131 

that  I  can  operate  the  ^Golden  Rule'  or  the 
*  Judge  not,  that  ye  be  not  judged!'  You  know 
of  young  men  who  spend  four  years  of  study  in 
the  university  trying  to  understand  and  be  able 
to  manipulate  the  laws  of  electricity, — and  be- 
come an  electrical  engineer.  But  did  you  ever 
hear  of  a  man  going  into  college  and  spending 
four  years  in  an  effort  to  understand  and  be 
able  to  operate  the  moral  laws  ?  What  we  want 
as  a  result  of  our  college  work  is  a  greater 
number  of  moral  engineers!  Our  moral  nature 
is  higher  than  our  intellectual  nature,  and  more 
difficult  to  develop ;  and  hence  we  have  scarcely 
begun  upon  it,  not  to  say  anything  of  our  spir- 
itual nature." 

''What  do  you  mean?"  I  asked. 

''I  mean  to  say,"  he  added,  ''that  away 
above  the  moral  man  there  is  another  man,  the 
spiritual  man ;  and  this  religious  man  is  as  far 
above  the  moral  man  as  the  moral  man  is  above 
the  intellectual  or  thinking  man.  Now,  faith 
is  to  the  spiritual  man  what  conscience  is  to  the 
moral  man  and  reason  to  the  intellectual  man. 
Just  as  much  a  faculty,  just  as  susceptible  of 
development,  and  by  the  same  laws  and  rules 
as  reason.    But  there  is  not  a  theological  school 


132    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

in  the  world,  so  far  as  I  know,  that  has  ever 
thought  of  attempting  to  constrnct  a  system  of 
study  that  would  contribute  to  the  development 
of  faith  as  mathematics  does  reason.  That  we 
have  faith  there  is  no  question.  That  it  is  ca- 
pable of  development  no  one,  I  think,  has  any 
doubt.  The  only  question  that  remains  to  be 
settled,  then,  is  this :  Is  it  possible  to  construct 
a  study,  or  a  system  of  studies,  to  co-ordinate 
and  correlate  a  series  of  laws  and  facts  in  such 
a  way  that  by  a  thorough,  systematic,  and  con- 
tinued study  of  the  same  we  may  secure  a  faith 
development  commensurate  with  our  reasoning 
power?" 

*'You  think,  then,  that  the  faith  of  the 
Christian  peoples  is  not  equal  to  their  reason,'' 
I  remarked. 

*'Do  you  think  it  is!''  he  asked.  **In  my 
judgment,  we  are  a  race  of  reasoning  or  think- 
ing monstrosities  and  of  moral  and  spiritual 
pigmies.  "We  think,  think,  think;  there  is  no 
problem  too  big  for  us  to  undertake.  We  are 
ready  to  spend  our  lives  boring  down  to  a  last 
little  analysis  of  some  problem  in  chemistry  or 
physics,  or  rooting  out  some  new  element,  or 
ferreting  out  some  new  power  of  nature;  but 


INTELLECTUAL  DEVELOPMENT      133 

how  much  of  the  time  spent  in  our  education  is 
put  on  the  development  of  a  conscience  that  is 
sensitive  to  the  slightest  variation  from  the 
laws  of  rectitude  and  the  rules  of  honesty?  If 
there  were  as  much  time  and  effort  spent  on 
the  development  of  a  sensitive  conscience  as 
there  is  on  the  manufacture  of  a  sensitive  ther- 
mometer, the  world  would  be  better  than  it  is 
to-day. ' ' 

*'Our  faith  does  not  seem  to  be  very  highly 
developed,''  I  remarked. 

'  *  It  is  not  developed  at  all, ' '  he  added.  '  *  We 
talk  about  reasoning  out  a  problem.  But  who 
ever  heard  any  one  talk  about  faithing  out  a 
matter.  We  have  made  reason  into  a  verb,  be- 
cause just  as  soon  as  a  faculty  goes  to  work  it 
must  work  as  a  verb.  But  who  ever  heard  of 
conscience  or  faith  having  been  made  into  a 
verb!  Why?  I  answer,  simply  because  we 
have  never  yet  set  conscience  or  faith  to  work 
on  the  moral  and  spiritual  problems  of  life." 

''Do  you  think  that  the  words  conscience 
and  faith  could  be  made  into  verbs?"  I  asked. 

'*  Anything  can  be  made  into  a  verb  if  it  can 
be  put  to  work.  There  are  great  spiritual  prob- 
lems which  will  never  be  solved  unless  they  are 


134     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

faithed.  Who  by  searching,  thinking,  reason- 
ing can  find  ont  God  1  Spiritual  problems  must 
be  solved  by  spiritual  faculties.  No  man  could 
solve  a  problem  in  euclid  by  faith.  Nor  could 
any  one  solve  a  spiritual  problem  by  reason. 
You  can  no  more  reason  the  things  of  faith  than 
you  can  faith  the  things  of  reason.  Each  must 
do  its  own  work  in  its  own  realm. ' ' 

'^What,  then,  is  the  realm  of  faith?"  I  in- 
quired. 

*^The  realm  of  spiritual  things,"  he  an- 
swered. '^Reason  links  the  thinking  man  with 
things.  Conscience  links  the  moral  man  with 
his  fellow-men.  Faith  links  the  religious  man 
with  God.  The  whole  man  is  thus  tied  up  to 
the  whole  universe. ' ' 

'' According  to  this,  then,  we  are  only  one- 
third  developed,"  I  suggested. 

' '  Quite  right, ' '  he  answered ;  ^  *  and  that  the 
lowest  third." 


CHAPTEE  XI 

NEED  OF  BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS 

In  thinking  over  my  conversation  with  my  psy- 
chological friend  I  could  not  but  admit  that  he 
was  more  than  half  right  in  his  views  of  our 
lack  of  development  and  the  shortcomings  of 
our  educational  system,  and  I  determined,  if 
possible,  to  talk  the  matter  over  with  some  of 
our  leading  educa,tors.  This  opportunity  came 
recently,  when  visiting  one  of  our  State  univer- 
sities, and  one  of  the  leading  professors  said 
to  me: 

*'I  have  been  told  that proposes  to 

spend  three  million  dollars  on  a  department  of 
morals.  AVhat  do  you  think  of  such  a  use  of 
funds! '^ 

''The  best  use  that  could  be  made  of  them," 
I  answered. 

''Would  you  be  willing,  if  you  were  at  the 
head  of  an  institution,  to  sink  that  amount  of 
money  in  a  scheme  as  impractical  as  that?"  he 
asked  further. 

"You  mean,"  I  returned,  "would  I  make  an 

135 


136    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

effort  to  float  a  project  of  that  kind  with  that 
amount  of  money  f 

**Well,  it  amounts  to  the  same  thing,"  he 
answered. 

^ '  I  think  I  would, ' '  I  answered.  ' '  And  then 
I  would  try  to  get  three  million  dollars  more  to 
float  a  department  of  religion." 

^  ^  What  do  you  mean  T '  he  inquired. 

*'Just  what  I  say,"  I  answered. 

'^But  I  do  not  understand,"  he  urged. 

**I  would  teach  boys  and  girls  the  impor- 
tance of  being  religious,  and  how  to  be  reli- 
gious, just  as  I  would  teach  them  how  to  be 
clever." 

^*But  you  do  not  mean  to  say  that  you  can 
teach  boys  and  girls  how  to  be  religious  and 
moral?"  he  rejoined. 

*^Why  not?"  I  answered. 

'*Why,  the  way  to  be  moral  and  religious  is 
just  to  be  moral  and  religious,"  he  explained. 

'  ^  Then,  on  the  same  principle,  the  way  to  be 
clever  is  just  to  be  clever;  is  it?"  I  asked. 

'* No;  to  be  clever,  one  has  to  study,"  he  an- 
swered. 

^* Is  n't  goodness  and  piety  as  important  as 
brilliancy?"  I  inquired. 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  137 

**01i,  yes;  I  suppose  so.  But  they  are  not 
so  practical/'  he  answered. 

**  What  do  you  mean  by  practical?"  I  asked. 

'  *  Useful, ' '  he  answered.  ' '  You  can 't  live  on 
goodness  and  piety." 

^^Live,"  I  answered;  **you  do  not  have  to 
live,  but  you  have  to  die;  and  goodness  and 
piety  are  a  good  deal  better  to  die  by  than  bril- 
liancy.    That  is  practical;  isn't  itr' 

**No;  but  the  present  age  is  an  age  when 
we  want  to  turn  all  our  knowledge  to  account. ' ' 

**You  mean,  when  we  want  to  transform  all 
our  brilliancy  into  money?" 

'^Well,  practically  it  amounts  to  that." 

*^And  is  that,  therefore,  the  best  thing  to 
do!" 

''That  is  the  disposition  of  the  age.  You 
examine  the  courses  of  study  in  our  colleges 
and  universities.  Notice  how  many  of  them  are 
of  a  practical  nature.  It  is  a  practical  age. 
Men  want  to  use  the  knowledge  they  acquire." 

''In  what  way?"  I  asked,  for  I  perceived  he 
was  just  now  leading  up  to  the  subject  I  wanted 
to  discuss;  for  I  had  recently  listened  to  two 
addresses  by  the  presidents  of  two  of  the  larg- 
est universities  in  America,  and  both  of  them 


138    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

discussed  the  practical  nature  of  the  present 
age— practical  being  the  ability  to  use  for  per- 
sonal ends  all  the  knowledge  and  power  one  ac- 
quires during  his  college  course. 

'^Well,  for  instance,  take  any  college  cur- 
riculum. You  will  find  that  a  large  percentage 
of  the  courses  of  study  are  of  the  nature  of  en- 
gineering— civil,  electrical,  mining — or  some 
other  practical  character  which  enables  a  man 
to  make  a  better  living/'  he  explained. 

**Ye6,  I  have  observed  that,''  I  answered; 
*^but  because  that  is  so,  is  it  therefore  best? 
Should  it  be  the  whole  object  of  an  educational 
institution  to  teach  men  to  be  smart  and  enable 
them  to  do  their  less  fortunate  brothers,  or 
should  it  be  a  part  of  their  duty  to  teach  them 
to  be  good  and  make  it  easier  for  others  to  live 
as  well  as  themselves  T' 

**Sure,"  he  answered.  I  give  his  own  ex- 
pression: *^It  is  the  business  of  the  school  to 
make  men  smart,  and  the  business  of  the 
Church  to  make  them  good." 

**I  venture,"  I  answered,  '*that  nine-tenths 
of  the  people  think  as  you  do.  I  am  inclined  to 
believe  that  the  opinion  of  the  government  is 
the  same,  for  not  much  attention  is  given  to 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  139 

morality  and  religion  in  onr  State  universities. 
But  does  that  make  it  right!  Have  n't  we  been 
a  bit  narrow  in  the  past!  Or  may  I  put  it  in 
another  form!  Have  we  not  been  so  intent  on 
understanding  nature  and  the  things  about  us, 
that  we  have  paid  too  little  attention  to  our- 
selves! Have  we  not  been  so  anxious  for  the 
present  that  we  have  given  too  little  thought  to 
the  future!  Have  we  not  thought  so  much  of 
our  stomach  and  our  back  that  we  have  forgot- 
ten that  the  other  fellow  has  a  stomach  and  a 
back  as  well!  Have  we  not  thought  so  much 
about  having  to  live  that  we  have  forgotten  that 
we  have  to  die!  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  mo- 
rality and  religion  are  only  good  to  die  by. 
They  are  as  good  to  live  by  as  intelligence; 
but  there  are  other  things  than  living,  and 
there  are  others  who  have  to  live  besides  our- 
selves. One  of  the  dangers  of  an  education  is 
that  it  will  make  men  clever  without  making 
them  good,  and  enable  them  to  take  advantage 
of  their  fellow-men  for  their  own  personal  ends. 
In  other  words,  education  is  liable  to  become 
self-culture  for  selfish  purposes.  Self-preser- 
vation may  be  the  first  law  of  nature,  but  self- 
sacrifice  is  the  first  law  of  God." 


140     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

*^Well,  you  do  not  think  that  an  education 
should  be  self -culture  for  benevolent  purposes, 
do  youf  he  exclaimed. 

** Pretty  nearly/'  I  answered.  *^An  educa- 
tion at  best  is  a  very  selfish  thing.  It  is  a  pour- 
ing in — just  pouring  in — shoveling  in,  or  draw- 
ing out,  of  a  young  mind.  The  young  people 
who  are  getting  an  education  are  just  getting, 
getting,  getting  all  the  time,  and  not  giving  out. 
They  are  being  done  for,  but  are  not  doing  any- 
thing for  any  one  else.  Now,  does  it  seem  right 
that  the  State,  or  the  public,  should  provide  in- 
stitutions to  devote  their  time — all  their  time — 
to  a  few  of  these  young  people  in  order  that 
they  may  live  the  more  easily  at  the  expense  of 
the  food  producers  and  the  clothes  producers, 
unless  they  can  add  very  materially  to  the  com- 
fort or  happiness  of  mankind  as  a  whole?" 

**But  you  can  not  induce  people  to  spend 
their  time  securing  an  education  in  order  to 
devote  themselves  to  the  good  of  others,  *'  he 
said. 

*'That  depends  upon  how  you  teach  them. 
If  you  teach  them  that  the  object  of  an  educa- 
tion is  to  get  more  out  of  life  rather  than  to 
put  more  into  life,  to  do  others  rather  than  to 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  141 

do  for  others,  to  try  to  be  happy  rather  than 
to  try  to  make  others  happy,  you  can  not  get 
them  to  devote  themselves  to  others.  But  if 
you  teach  them  that  the  first  twenty-five  years 
of  their  life  should  be  spent  developing  them- 
selves in  order  that  the  second  twenty-five  years 
may  be  spent  in  the  service  of  others,  you  will 
probably  produce  a  very  different  class  of 
scholars. ' ' 

**What  is  that  you  say!"  he  asked,  in  sur- 
prise. *'Do  you  mean  that  a  fellow  should 
spend  twenty-five  years  in  hard  study  in  order 
to  fit  himself  to  work  for  others !  ^ ' 

*  ^  That  is  one  way  of  putting  it, "  I  answered, 
''though  I  should  express  it  differently.  I 
should  spend  twenty-five  years  trying  to  find 
myself,  and  getting  right  views  and  right  values 
cf  life ;  then  I  would  spend  the  next  twenty-five 
trying  to  express  myself  in  terms  of  my  relation 
to  my  fellow-men.  There  is  some  excuse  for 
a  farmer  living  who  does  not  do  a  benevolent 
deed  all  his  life ;  he  is  producing  food  for  man- 
kind. There  is  some  excuse  also  for  a  laborer 
who  has  no  time  for  anything  but  the  support 
of  his  family ;  he  is  doing  the  work  of  the  world 
and  is  thus  a  producer.     But  he  is  a  pitiable 


142     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

figure,  indeed,  who,  with  an  education,  produces 
neither  food,  clothes,  work,  thought,  comfort, 
nor  consolation,  but  spends  his  time  trying  to 
secure  his  own  ease  and  prolong  his  own  life. 
He  is  a  parasite  on  the  public;  and  the  system 
of  education  that  leads  or  teaches  young  people 
to  believe  that  an  education  is  being  secured  in 
order  that  they  may  live  more  comfortably 
rather  than  that  they  may  help  others  to  be 
more  comfortable  and  happy  is  radically  wrong. 
The  fruit  of  an  education  should  be  very  much 
like  the  fruit  of  the  spirit. ' ' 

"What  do  you  meanT'  he  asked. 

**Well  I  wish  that  expression  of  the  'little 
hook-nosed  Jew  who  trod  the  air  into  the  third 
heaven  and  learnt  the  most  beautiful  things' 
were  in  some  other  book,  that  I  might  quote  it 
from  a  man  as  a  man — a  great  man — rather 
than  as  a  preacher." 

*^What  expression  r' 

'^That  expression  about  the  fruit  of  the 
spirit. ' ' 

'^Oh,  you  mean  love  and  all  those  other 
things  r*  he  said,  interrogatively. 

**Yes;  do  you  know  what  they  are?" 

'*I  don't  think  I  do,  in  the  order  in  which 
your  little  Jew  names  them." 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  143 

**  Well,  if  you  do  not  know  them  in  the  order 
in  which  he  names  them,  there  is  no  use  of 
knowing  them  at  all,''  I  remarked. 

**Whyr'  he  inquired. 

**  Because  everything  depends  upon  the  or- 
der in  which  they  come.  Paul  in  those  nine 
words  is  trying  to  express  his  conception  of  the 
moral  and  religious  development  of  a  human 
soul — or  his  moral  and  spiritual  education ;  for 
that  is  what  it  is.  Now,  if  our  educational  in- 
stitutions would  follow  those  directions  in  the 
development  of  young  people,  instead  of  only 
trying  to  teach  them  about  things,  we  would 
have  a  much  more  rounded  and  symmetrical  lot 
of  young  people  sent  out  from  our  colleges  year 
by  year. ' ' 

''Let  me  get  my  Testament  and  look  at  it," 
he  exclaimed.  ^'I  have  never  thought  of  it  in 
relation  to  an  education." 

''There  are  nine  of  them,  you  observe,"  I 
continued.  "Group  them  in  three  bunches  of 
three  each,  for  you  will  not  find  anywhere  else 
in  the  world  three  such  clusters  of  fruit." 

"The  first  three,"  he  remarked,  as  he  read 
them  over,  "are  'love,  joy,  peace;'  but  they  do 
not  strike  me  as  any  particular  part  of  an  edu- 
cation. ' ' 


144    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

*^ Indeed,"  said  I,  interrogatively;  '^do  you 
not  observe  that  love,  joy,  and  peace,  like  an 
education,  take  effect  upon  one's  self!  They 
have  nothing  to  do  with  any  one  else.  They 
are  absolutely  the  most  selfish  things  in  the 
world  in  that  you  can  not  give  them  to  any  one 
else.  You  can  not  share  them  with  others.  No 
matter  how  much  you  may  want  to  do  so,  you 
can  not  divide  your  joy  with  your  best  friend. 
It  is  yours,  and  yours  alone.'' 

*^0h,  I  do  not  think  you  are  right!"  he  ex^ 
claimed.  '*Why,  I  have  always  be«n  taught 
that  love  is  the  most  unselfish  thing  in  the 
world." 

^ '  Then  you  have  been  wrong, "  said  I,  under- 
standing exactly  what  he  meant,  but  without  ex- 
plaining myself.  *'Love  is  yours.  It  is  yours 
alone.  You  may  insiDire  it  in  some  one  else,  but 
you  can  not  divide  it  with  him.  Joy  likewise 
is  yours.  To  inspire  in  others  1  Yes,  perhaps ; 
but  not  to  divide.  Peace  is  yours.  Yours  only, 
with  no  power  to  divide  it,  however  much  you 
may  want  to  do  so,  with  any  one  else.  You  may 
lie  down  at  night  beside  your  friend,  your  wife, 
your  husband,  at  perfect  peace  with  yourself 
and  all  the  world,  while  they  think  and  worry 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  145 

and  toss  upon  a  bed  of  unrest ;  and  gladly  would 
you  divide  your  peace  with  them,  but  you  can 
not  do  so.  You  may  try  to  comfort  them,  but 
you  can  not  share  your  peace  with  them.  Love, 
joy,  and  peace,  the  firstfruits  of  the  spirit,  like 
an  education,  are  the  result  of  one's  own  con- 
duct or  effort,  and  can  not  be  given  to  us  by 
any  one  else.'' 

*^Now,  aren't  you  twisting  the  meaning 
there!"  he  said,  dubiously.  ^^It  looks  as  if 
what  you  say  is  right,  but  I  had  never  thought 
of  them  in  that  way  before. ' ' 

'^I  think  not,"  I  answered.  **Love  and  joy 
and  peace  are  the  personal  part  of  a  moral  and 
spiritual  education,  just  as  the  memory,  reason, 
and  imagination  are  the  personal  part  of  an  in- 
tellectual development.  Without  them  we  are 
moral  and  spiritual  imbeciles.  They  ought  to 
come  in  youth  at  the  same  time  with  our  intel- 
lectual development,  and  the  cultivation  of  them 
(I  do  not  mean  any  sexual  affection,  but  a  dis- 
position to  be  affectionate,  happy,  and  peace- 
ful) ought  to  be  as  much  a  part  of  our  system 
of  education  as  the  teaching  of  mathematics 
and  science.  If  these  are  developed  in  youth 
we  are  prepared  for  a  happy  and  successful 

10 


146     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

moral  and  spiritual  life ;  and  if  not — then  canes, 
cmtches,  and  bolsters.  Now,  what  are  the  next 
fruits  of  the  Spirit?" 

''  ^Longsuifering,  gentleness,  goodness,'  '' 
he  read  from  Galatians. 

**  Well,  what  do  you  make  of  that!"  I  asked. 

'^I  do  not  make  anything  of  it,"  he  replied. 

'^Do  you  not  see  how  naturally  that  follows 
upon  the  heels  of  love,  joy,  and  peace?"  I  in- 
quired. 

^'Not  exactly,"  he  answered. 

''I  do  not  understand  how  you  can  fail  to 
see  it,"  I  urged. 

'SSee  what?"  he  asked. 

'*See  the  connection,"  I  answered.  '*Just 
as  soon  as  one  has  within  himself  a  well-devel- 
oped love,  joy,  and  peace  he  can  not  but  express 
himself  in  longsuffering,  gentleness,  and  good- 
ness toward  his  fellow-men.  When  one  has  a 
well-developed  reason,  imagination,  or  invent- 
ive power,  he  wants  to  go  to  work  on  things  and 
make  machines,  poems,  pictures,  or  solve  the 
riddle  of  the  universe ;  so  when  one  has  a  well- 
developed  affection  and  a  well-cultivated  dispo- 
sition he  will  just  as  naturally  go  to  work  upon 
his  fellow-men  in  his  exercise  of  longsuffering 
or  patience  toward  them  in  their  shortcomings, 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  147 

gentleness  in  their  dealings,  and  goodness  in 
their  conduct.  It  is  the  conscience  of  the  man 
in  action.  It  is  his  moral  nature  operating  on 
his  fellow-men.  And  it  is  as  much  more  impor- 
tant than  intellectual  development  as  the  man 
is  of  more  consequence  than  the  machine  he 
operates.  And  yet  we  put  young  people  into 
school  and  teach  them  for  twenty-five  years  to 
develop  their  thinking  powers,  paying  little  at- 
tention to  their  morals,  and  even  turning  the 
New  Testament  and  prayer  out  of  our  public 
schools." 

*^It  does  look  a  good  deal  more  important 
and  more  serious  than  I  had  ever  thought  it 
was,''  he  answered,  as  he  read  the  words  over 
again  and  again. 

*  ^  Well,  what  is  the  last  cluster  of  that  fruit 
of  theSpiritr'Iasked. 

^ '  ^  Faith,  meekness,  temperance, '  "  he  read ; 
and  before  I  could  stop  him  he  finished  the 
verse,  ^^  ^against  such  there  is  no  law.'  " 

^^Well,  there  isn't  any  occasion  in  the  di- 
vine regime  for  any  law  against  such  things, 
though  there  seems  to  be  a  good  deal  of  opposi- 
tion to  temperance  in  some  States,"  I  re- 
marked. 

He  smiled. 


148     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

**Now,  you  notice/'  I  continued,  "that  this 
last  cluster  links  us  up  with  God,  just  as  the 
fomier  linked  us  with  our  fellow-men,  and 
leaves  us  in  the  closing  and  more  mature  years 
of  our  lives  to  perfect  our  own  character  in  the 
development  of  meekness  and  temperance. 
Love  and  joy  and  peace  come  in  youth;  but  who 
efver  knew  a  child  to  be  meek  or  temperate ! ' ' 

"Yes,  or  to  exercise  any  great  faith T'  he 
added. 

"What  do  you  meanf  I  asked  in  turn,  for 
I  was  not  sure  I  understood  him. 

"Why,"  he  explained,  "children  and  young 
people  want  to  know,  and  are  not  satisfied  with 
believing. ' ' 

"I  must  confess  I  do  not  yet  understand," 
I  added. 

"I  mean,  what  you  hfiow  you  do  not  have  to 
believe,  and  what  you  believe  you  admit  you  do 
not  hnow/'  he  explained. 

"I  hardly  think  I  agree  with  you,"  I  re- 
marked, "at  least  altogether.  Faith,  it  seems 
to  me,  is  a  faculty  which  enables  us  to  get  a 
kind  of  knowledge  that  reason  can  not  get ;  viz., 
a  knowledge  of  God,  of  salvation,  and  of  a  fu- 
ture life.    For  instance,  I  know  I  am  saved. 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  149 

I  did  not  get  that  knowledge  through  imagina- 
tion, through  intuition,  nor  through  reason,  but 
through  faith." 

**But  can  you  know  you  are  saved?"  he 
asked.    ^^Do  you  not  just  believe  you  are!" 

'*By  no  means,"  I  answered;  ^^I  know  it." 

**Howl"  he  asked. 

**Well,  this  is  where  the  man  of  reason  and 
the  man  of  faith  part  company,"  I  answered. 

*'What  do  you  mean?"  he  asked. 

< '  Why,  the  man  of  reason  holds  that  all  our 
knowledge  comes  through  reason.  And  our 
knowledge  of  things,  I  suppose,  does,  except 
where  faith  in  a  theory  helps  us.  But  faith  as 
a  faculty  helps  us  to  ferret  out  spiritual  veri- 
ties, just  as  reason  helps  us  to  solve  temporal 
problems ;  and  when  we  have  ferreted  them  out 
— or  faithed  them  out— we  are  just  as  certain  of 
them  as  we  are  of  any  other  facts." 

'  ^  For  instance  !  "  he  said,  interrogatively. 

**Well,  then,  for  instance,"  I  answered. 
''When  I  was  a  boy  of  eighteen,  and  one  must 
give  personal  experience  in  order  to  illustrate 
with  personal  knowledge,  I  did  not  feel  satisfied 
with  my  life.  I  felt  that  T  ought  to  be  a  Chris- 
tian.   I  had  not  been  a  bad  boy ;  that  is,  I  did 


150    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

not  swear,  or  steal,  or  love  low  company,  but 
I  went  to  cliureh  and  Sunday  school,  and  was, 
on  the  whole,  as  my  teachers  and  neighbors 
would  have  admitted,  a  good  son,  a  good 
brother,  a  good  boy.  But  I  was  not  satisfied. 
Eevival  services  were  being  held  in  our  church. 
I  did  not  attend  them  at  first  because  I  was 
teaching-iat  the  time,  walking  seven  miles  a  day 
to  and  from  school,  and  I  persuaded  myself  that 
I  had  enough  to  do. 

**  About  a  week  after  they  had  begun,  my 
mother  asked  me  if  I  was  not  going  to  attend 
the  services.  I  answered  that  I  was  not;  that 
my  long  walk  and  teaching  was  about  all  I  could 
do.     Then  she  said: 

*'  *Are  you  afraid  to  goV 

**I  shut  my  teeth  together  and  said  to  my- 
self, *I  '11  show  mother  that  I  am  not  afraid  to 
go,'  and  I  attended  the  meetings  every  evening 
of  the  week. 

**  Saturday  evening  there  was  a  lecture  in 
our  schoolhouse,  and  I  took  my  young  lady 
friend  to  hear  it.  As  we  were  driving  home  she 
asked : 

**  *Has  any  one  gone  to  the  altar  at  the  re- 
vival services?' 

"I  answered  that  no  one  had. 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  151 

*'  ^Tliat  is  queer,'  she  replied.  ^ There  are 
so  many  young  people  in  your  neighborhood 
who  do  not  belong  to  Church,  and  everybody 
likes  a  Christian  better  than  one  who  is  not  a 
Christian. ' 

*^Now,  that  seemed  the  most  reasonable 
thing  I  had  ever  heard,  and  I  decided  that  on 
Sunday  night  I  would  go  forward,  kneel  at  the 
altar,  and  seek  salvation.  I  did  in  all  honesty. 
I  prayed.  I  got  rid  of  everything  I  had  that 
would  separate  me  from  God.  I  prayed  during 
my  walks  to  and  from  school,  but  I  did  not  re- 
alize a  single  change.  This  continued  all  the 
week.  On  Saturday  forenoon  a  meeting  was 
held.  The  people  told  me  to  believe,  and  I 
would  be  converted.  I  could  not  understand 
how  I  was  to  believe  I  had  a  thing  that  I  did 
not  have  or  did  not  know  I  had.  I  went  home 
on  Saturday  morning.  My  brother  and  I  were 
sitting  in  the  parlor.  He  was  trying  to  start  a 
tune  which  he  did  not  know  very  well.  I  had 
not  sung  a  word  the  whole  week,  but  I  butted  in 
and  started  the  thing  for  him.  Mother  looked 
in  from  the  dining-room  and  asked: 

^^  ^Was  some  one  converted  at  the  meeting 
this  forenoon!' 

^'  *No,'  I  answered. 


152    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

*'  ^Are  you  sure!^  she  asked. 

*'And  I  said  to  myself,  'I  believe  I  am;  I  be- 
lieve I  am ; '  and  with  my  first  ^  believe '  came  the 
knowledge  that  I  was,  and  from  that  time  until 
the  present,  thirty-four  years,  I  have  known. 
That  is  what  I  mean  by  faithing  out  a  thing. 
There  is  a  kind  of  knowledge  that  comes  by  rea- 
son— a  knowledge  of  things;  and  then  there  is 
a  kind  of  knowledge  that  comes  by  faith,  just  as 
clear,  just  as  definite,  and  very  much  more  val- 
uable and  important ;  and  hence  I  think  the  rea- 
son for  God's  having  given  us-  the  command- 
ment as  He  did." 

*  ^  What  do  you  mean  T '  he  asked. 

^^I  mean  that  Grod  gave  mankind  four  com- 
mands in  regard  to  Himself — the  first  four — 
the  burden  of  which  was  that  we  should  love 
Him  with  all  our  heart,  mind,  soul,  strength. 
The  most  important  relation  a  man  has,  if  we 
are  to  judge  from  these  first  four  commands,  is 
relation  to  God;  and  hence  it  is  the  most  rea- 
sonable thing  in  the  world  to  believe  that  we 
can  faith  out  that  relation.  Then  the  last  six 
express  our  relation  to  our  fellow-men:  we 
should  honor  our  father  and  mother,  and  love 
our  neighbor  as  ourself,  and  never  try  to  do 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  153 

him  out  of  his  life,  his  character,  his  property, 
or  anything  that  is  his.  Now,  if  the  Almighty 
spent  the  whole  force  of  the  Ten  Command- 
ments on  our  relation  to  Him  and  our  fellow- 
men — our  moral  nature  and  our  religious  na- 
ture— would  it  be  an  impractical  use  of  funds 
to  have  a  department  of  morals  and  a  depart- 
ment of  religion  in  every  one  of  our  colleges? 
Wouldn't  it  be  the  part  of  wisdom  to  get  all 
of  our  young  people  linked  up  to  the  whole  uni- 
verse, rather  than  to  have  them  tied  down  to 
material  things  alone  T' 

*^I  do  not  know  but  it  would.  But  most 
people  do  not  think  of  it  in  that  way,"  he  re- 
plied. 

*•  *  Quite  right, ' '  I  answered.  '  *  A  great  many 
people  used  to  think  that  it  looked  wise  to  pre- 
tend to  be  agnostics;  ignoramuses,  for  that  is 
what  an  agnostic  admits  himself  to  be.  But 
that  time  is  past.  In  these  days,  however,  so 
much  attention  has  been  given  to  a  knowledge 
of  laws  and  forces  and  powers  and  things  that 
students  seem  to  think  it  a  sign  of  weakness 
to  be  found  studying  about  moral  and  religious 
matters,  when  in  reality  the  highest  and  best 
two-thirds  of  their  psychical  nature  {"pvx^)  is 


154     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

so  dwarfed  and  undeveloped  that  they  do  not 
even  have  the  power  to  conceive,  or  to  realize 
the  largeness  of  the  worlds  of  thought  that  lie 
beyond  their  horizon." 

*'I  do  not  think  I  understand  what  you 
mean,"  he  remarked. 

*^  Have  n't  you  heard  men  say  that  religion 
is  all  right  for  women  and  children,  but  it  is 
not  big  enough  for  men!  Or,  if  you  have  not 
heard  them  say  it  with  their  mouths,  go  to  any 
of  our  churches  and  look  at  the  congregation 
and  see  how  they  say  it  with  their  lives.  Go 
and  listen  to  some  of  the  baccalaureate  ad- 
dresses in  some  of  our  great  colleges  and  uni- 
versities, and  see  how  the  jDractical  character 
of  an  education  is  dwelt  upon  for  fifty-iive  min- 
utes, and  then  the  last  ^ve  minutes  are  given 
to  a  reference  to  the  moral  and  religious  nature 
in  a  sort  of  an  apologetic  tone,  as  though  it 
had  no  right  to  be  there.  I  am  not  talking  any 
supposition.  I  am  simply  describing  what  I 
heard  in  two  great  addresses  by  the  presidents 
of  two  of  our  greatest  universities  not  a  month 
ago.  Nor  am  I  referring  to  anything  that  is 
uncommon.  Go  to  any  of  the  Commencement 
exercises  of  our  State  institutions  and  you  will 
hear  the  same  thing.'* 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  155 

'*But  you  would  not  teach  religion  in  our 
State  institutions,  would  you?''  he  asked. 

*^Why  notf  I  rejoined.  *'I  would  not 
teach  sectarianism  —  Protestantism,  Catholi- 
cism, any  ism;  but  I  would  try  to  develop  good- 
ness and  reverence  in  young  people  as  I  develop 
intelligence.  I  would  try  to  give  them  some 
conception  of  what  they  are.  I  would  try  to 
develop  in  them  some  understanding  of  their 
whole  nature.  I  would  try  to  show  the  smarty 
who  thinks  he  is  intelligent  because  he  knows 
something  about  the  earth,  its  strata,  and  its 
history;  the  rocks,  the  minerals,  and  precious 
stones ;  the  animals ,  the  insects,  the  reptiles, 
and  the  birds ;  the  moss,  the  lichens,  the  flowers, 
and  the  trees;  the  combinations  of  air  and 
water  and  ten  thousand  other  things ;  the  laws 
of  matter,  of  magnetism,  and  of  mind ;  the  mo- 
tions of  the  planets  and  the  compositions  of  the 
stars ;  that  he  has  only  begun  to  understand  the 
elements  of  things.  I  would  try  to  impress 
upon  him  that  if  he  wished  to  be  really  intelli- 
gent he  would  ferret  out  and  explain  what  time 
and  space  and  infinity  and  existence  and  beauty 
and  duty  and  right  are.  And  then,  after  he  had 
explained  these  to  his  own  and  my  satisfaction, 
I  would  urge  upon  him  never  to  be  satisfied  with 


156     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

his  accomplishments  until  he  was  able  to  do  his 
duty  toward  his  fellow-students,  his  teachers, 
and  his  fellow-men,  and  live  in  a  right  attitude 
toward  God  and  get  results  from  prayer;  and 
then  he  would  be  in  a  fair  way  in  his  probation 
for  eternity.  Some  of  those  who  think  they  are 
rich  and  clever  and  famous  will  wake  up  some 
time  to  the  fact  that  what  they  thought  was 
treasure  is  filthy  lucre,  that  what  they  thought 
wisdom  was  foolishness,  and  what  they  thought 
fame  was  only  notoriety;  and  they  will  find 
themselves  starting  in  upon  eternity  as  half- 
inch  dwarfs  because  of  a  misconception  of 
values  during  the  period  of  their  probation  and 
education.'' 

'*But  how  are  you  going  to  find  time  during 
a  college  course  for  the  study  of  all  these 
things?"  he  asked. 

'*One  could  not  find  time  during  a  college 
course  for  the  study  of  all  these  things,"  I  re- 
plied. * '  But  one  ought  to  find  time  while  young 
people  are  in  school  to  make  right  impressions. 
We  do  not  get  an  education  while  in  college. 
We  only  get  a  start,  a  trend.  We  ought  to 
leam  enough  to  enable  us  to  study,  but  we  ought 
to  get  right  impressions  and  right  values  of  life. 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MORALS  157 

We  will  not  all  be  inclined  to  follow  the  same 
course,  but  we  should  all  know  enough  of  reli- 
gion and  morals  as  constituent  elements  in  an 
education  to  prevent  us  from  sneering  at  the 
highest  parts  of  our  nature  as  unimportant, 
and  focusing  our  minds  on  our  lower  faculties 
as  though  they  were  the  highest." 

*' Jesus  increased  in  stature  (physically) 
and  in  wisdom  (mentally)  and  in  favor  of  man 
(morally)  and  in  favor  with  God  (spiritually)," 
and  He  was  the  perfect  Man. 


CHAPTER  Xn 

BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MUSIC 

One  Sunday  in  Augnst,  1909,  I  was  invited  to 
give  an  address  in  the  great  auditorium  at 
Ocean  Grove,  N.  J.  I  arrived  at  Ocean  Grove 
on  Saturday,  and  was  given  a  ticket  of  admis- 
sion to  a  musical  entertainment,  the  principal 
performer  in  which  was  the  great  singer  Jom- 
melli.  There  were  more  than  seven  thousand 
people  present,  and  in  addition  to  her  singing, 
selections  were  given  by  others  on  the  piano 
and  on  the  great  organ,  one  of  the  largest,  I 
think,  in  the  United  States,  designed,  placed  in 
the  auditorium,  and  directed  by  Mr.  Jones, 
whom  you  will  easily  recognize  if  you  are  at 
Ocean  Grove  by  his  Paderewski  method  of 
dressing  his  hair. 

The  following  morning  I  spoke  to  an  audi- 
ence of  nine  thousand  people  on  *^The  By- 
products of  Missions, ' '  and  during  the  address 
I  called  attention  to  the  great  organ,  the  enter- 
tainment of  the  j)revious  evening,  and  to  the 

158 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MUSIC  159 

fact  that  one  might  search  the  non-Christian 
world  in  vain  for  a  human  voice,  cultivated  and 
developed  like  that  of  Jommelli. 

To  my  surprise,  after  the  address  I  discov- 
ered that  Jommelli  was  on  the  rostrum  behind 
me,  and  at  the  close  of  the  service  asked  to  be 
introduced,  and  also  introduced  her  husband  to 
me.  As  we  were  stopping  at  the  same  hotel,  she 
inquired  if  she  might  talk  with  me  some  time 
during  the  afternoon,  to  which  I,  of  course, 
replied  that  I  should  be  glad  to  have  the  honor 
of  her  acquaintance  and  an  opportunity  to  talk 
with  her. 

During  the  conversation  of  the  afternoon 
she  said: 

*^Mr.  Headland,  it  was  a  new  thought  to  me 
that  one  might  search  the  world,  I  mean  the 
non-Christian  world,  around  and  not  find  a 
well-cultivated  human  voice.    Is  that  trueT' 

**  You  have  been  around  the  world,  have  you 
not?"  I  inquired. 

**Yes,"  she  replied,  ^*I  have;  but  I  did  not 
think  to  look  for  singers.  I  suppose  I  was  so 
interested  in  singing  myself  that  I  did  not  think 
to  hunt  for  others." 

*  ^  You  have  been  in  theaters  in  China,  Japan, 


160    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

India,  and  other  Asiatic  countries,  liave  you 
notr'  I  asked  again. 

**Yes,"  she  repHed,  '^I  wanted  to  learn 
something  about  their  music,  and  so  I  attended 
their  theaters." 

*^Did  you  find  any  voice  that  you  thought 
was  being  used  properly, ' '  I  inquired,  ' '  or  any 
school  for  the  cultivation  of  the  voiced' 

'^None,"  she  answered. 

*  *  Neither  will  you  find  any  such,  though  you 
search  the  non-Christian  world  around, ' '  I  said. 

*^And  how  do  you  account  for  thisT'  she 
asked. 

'^By  the  Church,''  I  replied. 
**What  do  you  meanT' 

*  ^  I  mean  that  the  Church  is  the  cause  of  the 
world's  music,"  I  answered. 

*^ Impossible,"  she  replied. 

**You  know  the  history  of  the  development 
of  music,  do  you  not?"  I  went  on.  ^'Was  it 
not  a  demand  on  the  part  of  the  Church  for 
proper  music  that  developed  the  first  conserva- 
tories? Were  not  the  first  great  musical  com- 
positions sacred  rather  than  secular?  "Were 
not  the  first  composers  churchmen?  Follow  the 
history  of  music,  and  you  trace  it  back  to  the 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MUSIC  161 

same  source  as  the  history  of  art.  I  do  not 
mean  to  say  that  music  remained  under  the  su- 
pervision of  the  Church  any  more  than  did  art, 
but  it  was  the  demand  of  the  Church  for  proper 
music  for  her  worship  that  has  called  forth  the 
musical  talent  of  the  world;  and  you,  madam, 
would  not  have  been  using  that  beautiful  voice 
of  yours  to-day  but  for  the  Christian  Church. 
Every  human  voice  that  is  furnishing  the  world 
with  the  music  of  to-day,  as  well  as  the  voices 
that  are  hushed  forever:  Patti,  Melba,  Eames, 
Calve,  Caruso,  Delmores,  Xordica,  Fremstad, 
Mary  Garden,  Alice  Nielsen,  Zenatello,  Bonei, 
Cavalieri,  Constantino,  Lipkowska,  Baklanoff, 
Amato,  McCormack,  Boninsegua,  Emmy  Des- 
tinn,  Sammarco,  Anselmi,  Mardonis,  Scotti,  or 
Tetrazzini,  are,  whether  they  recognize  it  or 
not,  by-products  of  the  gospel. '' 

**Yes,''  she  replied,  ^^I  had  not  thought  of 
it  in  this  way  before.  I  suppose  we  do  not  give 
the  Church  credit  for  all  that  it  has  done  in  the 
civilizing  and  socializing  influence  it  has  had 
upon  the  world.  I  had  never  thought  of  the 
Church  but  as  a  religious  institution.  I  think 
most  people  think  of  it  only  as  such." 

*^No  doubt  they  do,"  I  replied;  ^'but  that 
11 


162    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

is  a  very  narrow  view.  Turn  now  to  the  great 
musical  compositions,  those  that  have  most 
touched  the  world's  heart.  Are  they  sacred  or 
secular!'' 

'* Sacred,  of  course,"  she  replied.  ''But 
that  is  because  of  the  natural  human  instinct  to 
be  religious." 

''Is  that  true?"  I  asked. 

"Is  it  not?"  she  counter-questioned. 

"  If  it  is, ' '  I  replied, ' '  why  do  not  the  Chinese 
and  the  Hindoos  have  such  music!" 

"Perhaps  they  are  not  so  religious  as  we 
are,"  she  replied. 

"Who  gave  us  the  great  religions  of  the 
world!"  I  queried. 

"I  have  never  thought  who,"  she  answered. 

' '  China  gave  us  two :  Taoism  and  Confucian- 
ism; India  two:  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism; 
Persia  one:  Zoroastrianism ;  Arabia  one: 
Mohammedanism ;  and  Palestine  two :  Judaism 
and  Christianity.  The  Europeans  never  orig- 
inated a  religion  that  was  worth  propagating. 
How  comes  it  that  we  are  more  religious  than 
they,  when  they  originated  all  the  religions!" 

"Ah!  indeed;  I  had  never  thought  of  that. 
That  is  extremely  interesting.    We  are  not  re- 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MUSIC  163 

ligious  enough  to  have  made  great  sacred  com- 
positions without  the  stimulus  of  Christianity!" 
she  exclaimed.  ^^I  shall  always  be  more  inter- 
ested in  religion  than  I  have  been  heretofore. 
We  are  indebted  to  it  for  all  the  products  of 
our  musical  genius ! ' ' 

*'Nay,  more,"  I  replied;  ^^we  are  indebted 
to  it  for  all  our  great  composers  as  well. ' ' 

*'Ah?"  said  she,  with  an  interrogatory  tone. 

**Are  we  not?"  I  asked.  '^ Could  we  have 
had  a  Mendelssohn,  a  AYagner,  a  Meyerbeer,  a 
Eubinstein,  a  Verdi,  a  Liszt,  a  Eossini  without 
the  demand,  the  stimulus,  the  preparation,  the 
sentiment,  and  the  inspiration  that  have  come 
from  Christianity?" 

*^ Indeed,  our  debt  is  great,"  she  exclaimed; 
*  ^  greater  than  it  had  ever  occurred  to  me  to  con- 
sider ! " 

Just  as  she  spoke  it  began  to  thunder,  as  I 
supposed,  and  we  both  bent  our  ears  in  an  atti- 
tude of  listeners. 

^*Ah,"  she  exclaimed,  with  a  flash  of  appre- 
ciation in  her  eyes,  *^the  organ  is  playing." 

^^The  organ  of  the  spheres,"  I  answered. 

'^No,  the  organ  in  the  auditorium,"  she  re- 
plied. 


164     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

''Is  not  that  thunder?''  I  asked. 

*'No;  that  is  the  organ,"  she  answered.  *'It 
is  a  very  good  representation  of  thunder,  isn't 
itr' 

**It  is,  indeed.  I  was  convinced  that  it  was 
thunder,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  sun  is  shin- 
ing," I  remarked.  ''That  organ  is  a  great  ad- 
vance on  the  Chinese  sheng." 

''What  do  you  mean?"  she  queried. 

''Did  you  not  see  the  Chinese  sheng — the 
oldest  representative  of  pipe  organs  I "  I  asked. 

"Oh,  you  mean  the  half  of  a  cocoanut  with 
bamboo  tubes  or  pii3es  of  various  lengths  at- 
tached?" she  said,  with  an  interrogatory  ac- 
cent. "But  I  did  not  learn  when  it  was  made, 
whether  before  or  after  our  pipe  organ.  And 
I  had  not  thought  of  associating  the  two." 

"Yes,  I  think  the  Chinese  should  be  given 
credit  for  having  made  the  first  pipe  organ," 
I  said.  "The  Emperor  Huang  Ti  appointed  a 
committee  about  2697  B.  C.  to  select  a  series  of 
bamboo  tubes  of  various  lengths,  so  the  story 
goes,  to  represent  the  seven  musical  notes ;  for 
they  have  seven  instead  of  eight,  as  we  have. 
They  did  so,  and  the  result  is  preserved  in  the 
sheng,  the  ancestor  of  the  pipe  organ,  if  we 
snay  so  call  it." 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MUSIC  165 

**That  leads  me  to  speak  of  what  I  wanted 
to  talk  to  you  about/'  she  said;  '^Chinese  mu- 
sic. They  have  a  system  of  music,  have  they 
notf  she  asked. 

''They  have,"  I  answered.  ''The  emperor 
appointed  his  committee,  had  them  select  their 
musical  bamboo  tubes,  arrange  their  scale,  and 
begin  making  their  musical  instruments,  and  so 
far  as  I  know  they  have  not  made  any  marked 
changes  in  it  from  that  time  until  the  present, 
except  that  modern  music  of  a  theatrical  or 
popular  class  began  in  the  Tang  dynasty. 
They  have,  therefore,  two  classes  of  music :  the 
ritual  and  the  popular.  The  former  is  used  in 
acts  of  worship  in  which  the  emperor  takes  part 
and  holds  a  place  of  the  highest  importance  in 
the  government.  *' 

''Have  you  ever  heard  any  Chinese  music 
that  was  pleasing  to  your  ear!''  she  asked. 

*' Shortly  after  I  went  to  China,"  I  replied. 
*'I  must  confess  that  I  sympathized  with  that 
person  who  described  Chinese  music  as  'deli- 
ciously  horrible,  like  cats  trying  to  sing  bass 
with  sore  throats.'  But  before  I  left  China  I 
never  passed  a  shop  at  New  Year's  time  where 
an  orchestra  was  playing  without  stopping  to 


166     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

listen  to  the  minor  strains  of  some  of  their 
stringed  instruments.  Now,  I  may  be  preju- 
diced, for  I  am  very  fond  of  the  Chinese,  and 
am  ever  seeking  to  find  their  good  qualities. 
But  my  friend,  Mr.  Van  Aalst,  who  has  studied 
Chinese  music  more  than  any  other  living  Euro- 
pean, says  ^the  ritual  or  sacred  music  is  pass- 
ably sweety  and  generally  of  a  minor  charac- 
ter;' and  we  are  told  that  ^Confucius  was  so 
ravished  on  hearing  a  piece  composed  by  the 
great  Shun,  more  than  2200  B.  C,  that  he 
did  not  taste  meat  for  three  years.'  On  one 
occasion,  in  1896,  I  was  attending  a  meeting 
of  the  China  Educational  Association,  when 
the  Christian  Endeavor  Convention  met  in 
Shanghai.  Among  the  musical  selections  given 
was  one  by  a  soloist  accompanied  by  an  or- 
chestra of  Chinese  instruments  consisting  of 
a  sheng,  a  flute,  a  clarionet te,  and  a  stringed 
instrument  corresponding  to  our  violin.  I  never 
saw  an  audience  so  moved  by  music.  They 
listened  to  the  first  verse  with  rapture,  the 
second  verse  with  ecstasy,  while  during  the 
third  verse  they  could  not  control  themselves, 
but  all  joined  in  with  the  singer  with  un- 
bounded enthusiasm.    During  the  fourth  verse 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MUSIC  167 

all  rose  to  their  feet  and  sang  with  an  abandon 
I  have  never  witnessed  in  an  audience;  and 
when  the  song  ended  they  clapped,  stamped, 
waved  their  handkerchiefs,  and  almost  went 
wild.  Now,  I  want  to  add  that  this  was  a  Chris- 
tian hymn,  composed  by  the  Chinese  to  a  Chi- 
nese tnne,  snng  by  a  congregation  of  some  five 
hundred  young  Chinese  Christian  Endeavorers. 
But  the  enthusiasm  was  refreshing.'' 

''And  what  about  their  musical  instruments? 
They  are  mostly  very  crude,  are  they  notT'  she 
inquired. 

''The  sheng  is  simple,  crude,  and  ingeni- 
ous," I  answered.  '^But  it  was  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  sheng  into  Europe,  according  to  va- 
rious writers,  which  led  to  the  invention  of  the 
accordion  and  the  harmonium.  And  it  is  also 
said  that  Kratzenstein,  an  organ  builder  of  St. 
Petersburg,  having  become  the  possessor  of  a 
sJieng,  conceived  the  idea  of  applying  the  prin- 
ciple to  organ  stops.  It  is  the  most  delicate  of 
construction,  and  is  the  most  delicate  of  tone, 
though  many  other  instruments  are  much  more 
universally  employed,  especially  in  the  north. 
The  banjo,  the  violin,  the  guitar,  the  harp,  the 
flute,  and  the  clarionette  are  the  most  commonly 


168     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

used  in  the  north  of  China.  The  sheng  is  com- 
mon in  and  about  Shanghai  and  the  south.  But 
all  of  them  are  very  crude.  The  intervals  of  the 
scale  are  not  temioered,  and  the  notes  sound 
false  and  discordant  to  our  ears.  There  is  no 
precision  in  the  construction  of  the  instruments, 
no  exactness  in  the  intonation ;  the  melodies  are 
very  much  in  the  same  key,  equally  loud  and 
unchangeable  in  movement,  and  naturally  be- 
come wearisome  and  monotonous  to  an  ear  ac- 
customed to  the  music  of  the  West.  Their  mel- 
odies are  never  definitely  major  nor  minor,  but 
float  between  the  two,  and  hence  lack  the  vigor, 
the  majesty,  or  the  tender  lamentations  of  our 
minor  modes,  or  the  charm  resulting  from  the 
alternation  of  the  two  modes.  Moreover,  they 
have  no  satisfactory  method  of  expressing  time. 
In  a  single  word,  it  is  enough  tc  say  that  their 
music  is  not  scientifically  constructed,  and  no 
more  is  their  musical  instruments,  and  hence 
can  not  please  an  ear  that  is  offended  by  a  lack 
of  exactness.  But  now  let  me  quote  how  a  Chi- 
nese says  their  music  affected  him.  He  says  it 
moved 

''  'Softly,    as    the    murmur    of    whispered 
words;  now  loud  and  soft  together,  like  the 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  MUSIC  169 

patter  of  pearls  and  pearlets  dropping  in  a  mar- 
ble dish;  or  liquid,  like  the  warbling  of  the 
mango-bird  in  the  bush;  trickling  like  the 
streamlet  in  its  downward  course.  And  then, 
like  the  torrent,  stilled  by  the  grip  of  frost,  so 
for  a  moment  was  the  music  lulled,  in  a  passion 
too  deep  for  words.'  " 

^^It  must  be  admitted,"  she  said,  *'that  that 
description  would  fit  very  well  to  that  of  a 
musical  enthusiast  in  Italy  or  France.  I  do  not 
know  but  their  music   affects  them  as   ours 

does  us." 

*^I  think  it  does,"  I  answered.  ^^But  you 
were  asking  about  their  musical  instruments, 
and,  indeed,  I  began  telling  you  about  their  mu- 
sical instniments  as  a  result  of  hearing  the 
thunder  of  the  organ  in  the  auditorium.'' 

*' Quite  right,"  she  replied. 

*'The  contrast  between  their  instruments 
and  ours  is  very  striking, ' '  I  went  on.  ' '  Theirs 
are  crude,  rough,  hand-made,  in  small  hovels 
rather  than  shops  or  factories.  The  strings  on 
most,  if  not  all  their  stringed  instruments,  are 
silk  rather  than  gut,  and  none  that  I  have  ever 
seen  are  wrapped  with  wire.  They  have  noth- 
ing that  corresponds  to  our  organ,  piano,  or 


170     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

large  pipe  organ;  indeed,  our  musical  instru- 
ments of  the  largest  kind,  again,  are  by-products 
of  the  gospel  in  the  intelligence  that  was  neces- 
sary to  make  them,  and  of  the  Church  in  its  de- 
mand for  them.  For,  but  for  the  Church,  there 
is  little,  if  any,  reason  to  believe  that  the  manu- 
facture of  musical  instruments  would  ever  have 
reached  the  condition  it  has." 

'^You  seem  to  give  the  gospel  credit  for  all 
our  progress  in  music,"  said  Madam  Jommelli. 

*^I  give  the  gospel  credit  for  having  devel- 
oped the  school  that  made  possible  the  intelli- 
gence to  make  such  musical  instruments;  and 
then  I  give  the  Church  credit  for  having  created 
the  demand  which  led  manufacturers  to  furnish 
the  supply,"  I  answered. 

*' And  I  think  you  are  more  than  half  right, 
Mr.  Headland,"  she  said,  as  she  rose  to  go. 
*'I  have  enjoyed  very  much  this  conversation. 
I  have  a  better  opinion  of  the  Chinese,  a  larger 
view  of  the  Church,  and  I  like  the  gospel  better 
than  I  ever  did  before.  I  shall  read  my  New 
Testament  with  a  different  relish." 


CHAPTEE  XIII 

BY-PEODUCTS  IN  AET 

I  WAS  invited  recently  to  deliver  a  lecture  on 
Chinese  art  before  the  Century  Club  of  New 
York.  I  wish  to  say  that  I  do  not  pose  as  either 
an  artist  nor  an  art  critic ;  but  I  have  made  a 
collection  of  Chinese  paintings  and  have  made 
a  sufficient  study  of  European  art  to  justify 
what  I  wish  to  say  in  this  chapter.  There  were 
present  that  evening  some  of  the  most  noted 
American  authors,  artists,  and  art  critics, 
among  whom  I  think  I  may  mention  Mr.  F. 
Hopkinson  Smith,  Mr.  John  La  Farge,  and  Sir 
Caspar  Purdon-Clarke. 

After  the  lecture  Mr.  John  La  Farge,  who, 
I  believe,  deserves  to  be  ranked  among  Amer- 
ica's most  renowned  artists,  and  who  was  spe- 
cially interested  in  Oriental  art,  said  to  me: 

''What  do  the  Chinese  regard  as  the  under- 
lying motive  in  the  beginning  of  their  artT' 

''The  desire  to  express  their  thoughts  in 
pictorial  form,  I  think,"  I  replied. 

171 


172    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

^^And  what  were  their  first  studies?"  he 
further  inquired. 

''Figures,  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to 
leam,''  I  replied. 

''Then  leaving  figures,  what  did  they  seek 
to  do  next!''  he  asked. 

"They  began  to  make  pictures  of  build- 
ings and  maps  of  conquered  territory,"  I  an- 
swered. 

' '  Then,  of  course,  they  drifted  oif  into  land- 
scapes by  adding  touches  of  scenery  or  flowers, 
and  trees  to  their  figures,  I  suppose,"  he  sug- 
gested> 

' '  Quite  right, ' '  I  replied. 

' '  Now,  in  your  study  of  Chinese  art,  did  you 
discover  what  it  was  that  gave  the  first  great 
stimulus  to  their  art,  and  about  what  time?" 
he  inquired. 

*' Indeed  I  did,"  I  replied;  ''it  was  the  intro- 
duction of  Buddhism,  about  65  A.  D." 

"In  what  way?"  he  asked. 

"From  about  1100  B.  C,  when  we  find  the 
first  record  of  a  painting,  down  to  the  time  of 
our  present  era  almost  everything  we  come 
upon  in  their  records  are  figures,  paintings,  and 
maps.    About  the  beginning  of  our  era  there 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  ART  173 

were  two  great  portrait  galleries  erected,  in 
one  of  which  were  placed  pictures  representing 
all  the  great  mythical  as  well  as  the  great  his- 
toric rnlers  of  the  past,  and  this  was  called  the 
Choii  Kung  Li  Tien.  In  the  other  were  placed 
portraits  of  the  twenty-eight  great  men  who 
heliDed  to  establish  the  Han  dynasty.  This  was 
called  the  Yiin  T'ai  Hall.  There  is  a  record  of 
still  another  gallery,  the  Han  Lu  Ling  Kuang 
Tien,  in  which  were  painted  all  kinds  of  bogies 
from  the  mountain  and  monstrosities  from  the 
sea  in  colors  which  harmonized  with  what  the 
artist  thought  the  original  ought  to  be.  In  or- 
der not  to  be  behind  the  men  in  the  preserva- 
tion of  portraits  of  her  sex,  the  Empress  Liang 
(125  A.  D.)  had  painted  for  herself  imaginary 
portraits  of  all  the  female  worthies  mentioned 
in  the  *  Records  of  Famous  Women'  {Lieh  Nil 
Chuan),  a  noted  book  of  the  time,  preserved 
until  the  present  day.  Though  as  early  as  65 
A.  D.  the  Emperor  Ming  Ti,  who  introduced 
Buddhism  into  China,  established  the  custom  of 
having  court  painters,  a  custom  which  has  con- 
tinued until  the  present.'' 

'*Ah,  indeed,  I  did  not  know  that  they  kept 
court  painters,"  he  remarked. 


174     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

^^Oh,  yes;  the  late  empress  dowager  sup- 
ported eighteen  court  painters,"  I  answered. 

**But,  to  return  to  the  subject,"  he  con- 
tinued, ^^you  were  speaking  of  the  introduction 
of  Buddhism." 

'*The  first  six  hundred  years  after  Bud- 
dhism was  introduced  into  China  was  a  period 
of  almost  constant  war.  From  200  A.  D.  to 
600  A.  D.,  a  period  of  four  hundred  years,  there 
were  ninety  rulers  sat  upon  the  throne  or 
thrones,  as  compared  with  thirty  during  the 
previous  four  centuries.  But  during  this  same 
period  there  were  three  religions  striving  for 
supremacy:  Taoism,  Confucianism,  and  Bud- 
Idhism;  and  each  was  using  everything  that 
would  contribute  to  its  permanent  establish- 
ment, either  at  court  or  in  the  hearts  of  the 
people.  Nothing  was  more  powerful  than  art, 
and  so  the  Confucianists  decorated  their  schools 
with  portraits  of  their  scholars,  the  Buddhists 
their  temples  with  pictures  of  their  divinities, 
and  the  Taoists  their  temples  with  pictures  of 
their  fairies  and  immortals,  with  an  occasional 
genius  stolen  from  the  Confucianists  or  a  god 
from  the  Buddhists.  This  decoration  or  fres- 
coing of  the  temples — for  it  was  all  done  on 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  ART  175 

the  walls,  fixed  the  attention  of  the  people  on 
pictorial  representation,  and  thus  the  art  of  the 
Orient  was  developed  in  connection  with  its  re- 
ligion. ' ' 

''The  same  is  true  of  pictorial  art  in 
Europe,"  said  Mr.  La  Farge. 

*'What  do  you  meanT'  I  inquired;  for  while 
I  thought  I  knew  what  he  meant,  I  wanted  to 
hear  him  say  it. 

''To  the  Greeks,"  said  he,  "I  suppose  we 
must  give  credit  for  having  reached  the  highest 
proficiency  in  sculpture;  but  the  first  real  stim- 
ulus to  European  pictorial  art  was  given  it 
when  the  Italians,  the  Spanish,  the  Dutch,  the 
Flemish,  and  the  Germans  began  to  utilize  it 
in  the  decoration  of  their  churches.  This  is  es- 
pecially true  of  portraiture;  for,  as  you  know, 
even  portrait  painting  had  not  attained  to  any 
degree  of  development  until  men  and  women 
began  to  pose  as  members  of  the  Holy  Family 
and  other  sacred  personages  for  the  altar  pieces 
and  other  paintings  and  decorations  in  Euro- 
pean churches.  But  for  more  than  two  centu- 
ries, from  Cimabue  and  Giotto  to  Titian  and 
Veronese,  the  great  artists  confined  themselves 
almost  entirely  to  sacred  art  in  their  frescoing 


176     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OP  MISSIONS 

of  the  cathedrals  and  churches,  and  portrait 
painting  as  such  was  an  outgrowth  of  this  sa- 
cred art.'' 

^  ^  The  same  is  true  of  each  of  the  European 
countries,  in  the  development  of  its  art,  is  it 
notr'  I  inquired. 

*  ^  Yes, ' '  he  answered.  *  ^  Italian  art  dreamed 
of  beauty,  and  in  a  measure  it  realized  its 
dream,  tinted  with  the  colors  of  a  Venetian  sky 
and  the  glow  of  heaven  in  the  heart  of  the  artist. 
Flemish  art  was  in  love  with  truth,  and  it  held 
its  mirror  up  to  nature — but  nature  to  advan- 
tage  dressed;  for  the  glow  of  the  spiritual  also 
shone  in  all  the  Flemish  art  of  the  Eenaissance. 
German  art  rarely  achieved  either  truth  or 
beauty;  but  it  succeeded  in  rendering,  with  a 
fidelity  tha,t  was  often  almost  brutal,  the  virile 
character  of  the  German  people,  both  before 
and  after  the  Reformation.  But  all  art  that 
was  worthy  of  note  was  inspired  by  the  reli- 
gious zeal  of  the  ages,  and  executed  by  men  who 
were  more  or  less  true  to  the  religious  ideals 
of  their  time." 

*^  What  would  you  say  were  the  studies  most 
affected  by  the  artists  of  those  times  T'  I  asked. 

He  thought  for  a  moment,  and  then  he  an- 
swered : 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  ART  177 

*^The  Virgin  and  the  Christ,  where  it  was 
possible  to  decorate  the  churches  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  countries,  portraiture,  and  then  land- 
scapes among  the  Protestant  peoples.  The  art 
idea  had  caught  the  hearts  of  rulers  and  people 
alike,  and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  were 
not  allowed  to  decorate  their  churches  they  cul- 
tivated their  art.  But  their  homes  were  small 
and  dark,  and  their  town  halls  and  public  build- 
ings were  decorated  with  portraits  of  sheriffs, 
burgomasters,  surgeons,  or  groups  of  directors 
of  charitable  institutions,  or  scholars.  But  art 
among  the  Protestant  peoples  lost  that  touch 
of  the  spirituelle  which  was  not  counterbalanced 
by  anything  that  it  gained  in  strength  or  natu- 
ralness. And  now,  ^ve  hundred  years  after- 
ward, the  pictures  most  in  demand  are  those 
that  were  inspired  and  executed  by  men  filled 
with  a  religious  zeal." 

*'And  now,'^  Mr.  La  Farge,  **I  want  to  ask 
you  what  you  think  of  the  comparative  value  of 
Oriental  and  Occidental  art,"  I  said. 

*^I  am  not  sure  that  I  know  enough  about 
Oriental  art  to  give  an  intelligent  opinion,"  he 
answered.  ^  ^  I  am  not  sure  that  any  Occidental 
does.    There  are  interesting  features  about  Ori- 

12 


178     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

ental  art  that  are  different  from  anything  we 
have  yet  conceived  of.  Their  brushwork  is  one. 
Their  point  of  view  is  another.  Their  perspec- 
tive is  still  another.  Their  materials — paper 
and  silk  instead  of  canvas — is  another.  But  it 
seems  to  me  they  emphasize  the  grotesque,  and 
they  lose  in  a  lack  of  naturalness.  You  have 
paid  more  attention  to  Oriental  art  than  I  have ; 
what  do  you  think?" 

^^I  wanted  your  opinion  as  an  artist,"  I  in- 
sisted. 

^'My  own  opinion  is  that  the  Oriental  has 
almost  everything  to  learn  from  us,  while  there 
are  but  few — there  are  some — suggestions  in 
his  art  for  us  that  we  have  not  already  struck  in 
the  development  of  our  own  art.  For  instance, 
his  colors  are  almost  all  pulverized  minerals 
mixed  with  water  and  glue,  the  same  as  those 
used  by  the  Italians  of  the  early  Renaissance. 
These  we  have  long  ago  given  up  for  oil  and 
canvas,  and  thus  far  we  have  not  had  occasion 
to  return  to  them.  His  paper  and  silk,  with  his 
method  of  mounting  on  scrolls,  are  convenient 
and  economize  space;  but  I  doubt  if  they  con- 
tribute to  the  preservation  of  the  picture  or  en- 
hance its  richness  or  beauty  as  we  can  by  our 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  ART  179 

frames.  But,  I  repeat,  you  have  paid  more  at- 
tention to  Oriental  art  than  I  have.  What  is 
your  own  opinion  of  their  comparative  values?" 
*^My  own  opinion,"  I  remarked,  **I  fear,  is 
the  result  of  the  attitude  at  present  assumed  by 
the  Oriental  toward  his  own  art.  The  natural 
disposition  of  the  Yankee,  as  we  dub  the  Amer- 
ican, is  to  be  the  first  to  take  anything  new  that 
will  add  to  what  he  has.  This  is  one  reason  why 
he  is  what  he  is.  He  is  always  on  the  lookout 
for  new  things  that  are  good.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Oriental  has  always  been  a  bit  slow, 
except  in  the  case  of  the  Japanese,  to  learn  from 
the  Western  Barbarian,  as  he  has  termed  him. 
We  find  in  this  particular  case,  however,  the 
tables  turned.  The  Japanese,  who  was  the  first 
to  learn  about  European  art,  has  practically 
given  up  his  own,  which  was  originally  Chinese 
art  adopted  and  adapted  to  Japanese  use,  while 
the  most  noted  Chinese  artists  of  the  present 
day,  attracted  by  the  naturalness  of  our  birds, 
animals,  and  portraits,  are  adopting  our  meth- 
ods instead  of  their  own ;  while  the  late  empress 
dowager,  the  greatest  of  Chinese  rulers  for  a 
century  past,  left  at  least  three  of  her  own  por- 
traits, painted  by  Western  artists — Miss  Carl 


180     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

and  Mr.  Vos — in  the  national  gallery.  Consid- 
ering the  indifference  of  the  Oriental  to  West- 
ern things,  his  indisposition  to  change,  and  his 
slowness  to  appreciate  the  good  in  others ;  and 
considering  the  quickness  of  the  Westerner  to 
appreciate,  at  least,  anything  that  will  add  to 
the  commercial  value  of  anything,  I  should  say 
that  Western  art  has  every  advantage  over  that 
of  the  Orient,  else  the  Oriental  would  not  have 
adopted  it,  and  the  Occidental  would  have 
adopted  his.'^ 

*^I  think  you  are  more  than  half  right,"  said 
Mr.  La  Farge,  as  he  bade  me  good-bye. 

Now,  this  is  the  conclusion  to  which  my 
conversation  with  this  great  American  artist 
has  led  me:  That  the  best  art  that  the  world 
has  to-day,  or  that  the  world  has  ever  known, 
has  been  inspired  and  executed  by  the  man  who 
has  been  developed  by  the  gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  hence  is  a  by-product  of  the  gospel 
and  of  missions. 

The  history  of  each  individual  is  the  history 
of  all  time.  The  little  child  with  his  rattle  and 
his  toys,  his  whistle,  drum,  and  noise  is  the 
savage  with  all  his  destructive  tendencies  and 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  ART  181 

his  indifference  to  everything  but  his  own 
wishes.  The  little  boy  with  his  blocks  builds 
his  pyramids,  his  Assyrian  and  Babylonian 
palaces,  his  stonehenge  or  his  Sphinx,  his  Par- 
thenon or  his  Acropolis.  He  is  a  builder  and 
passes  through  the  building  age  of  the  world's 
civilization — that  age  which  gave  to  the  Chinese 
a  wall  stretching  fifteen  hundred  miles  from  the 
sea  and  winding  like  a  great  dragon  from  moun- 
tain top  to  mountain  top,  far  up  into  the  desert. 
Coarse  and  rough,  gigantic  and  magnificent, 
almost  sublime  in  its  bigness,  but  not  beautiful. 
Then  comes  the  dark  age,  when  his  sleeves  and 
trousers  are  too  short,  and  her  legs  and  tongue 
are  too  long ;  when  they  organize  crusades,  and 
shoot  and  scalp,  and  go  to  Sunday  school,  and 
talk  religion  and  philosophy,  and  doubt  and 
dispute.  Then  comes  the  Eenaissauce,  when  he 
begins  to  brush,  and  she  begins  to  primp,  and 
the  flowers  begin  to  bloom,  and  his  imagination 
paints  pictures  in  every  field  and  forest,  glade 
and  glen;  when  he  sees  ''books  in  the  running 
brooks,  sermons  in  stones,  and  good  in  every- 
thing.'' And  again  he  builds;  but  what  he 
builds  depends  upon  the  advantages  and  the 
stimulus  he  has  had.    The  Mohammedan  builds 


182     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

mosques,  the  Buddhist  builds  temples,  the 
Christian  builds  cathedrals  and  churches.  But 
what  a  striking  difference  in  the  results !  These 
little  savages  have  been  studying  in  different 
schools,  they  have  been  living  in  different 
worlds.  Those  put  paper  windows  in  their  tem- 
ples, that  are  blown  off  with  every  passing 
wind,  and  the  floor  of  the  temple  is  covered 
with  dust. 

They  are  but  dimly  lit  during  the  day,  for 
the  light  of  heaven  with  difficulty  penetrates 
the  paper  pasted  upon  the  lattice  work.  They 
are  more  dimly  lit  at  night,  for  a  tallow  taper 
or  a  pith  floating  in  a  bowl  of  oil  is  the  only 
light  their  intelligence  has  ever  devised.  Their 
idols  grin  at  them  from  the  shadows  of  every 
comer,  and  the  bat  flitting  from  rafter  to  rafter 
scatters  dust  and  dirt  upon  them  as  they  bow 
before  their  gods.  Ragged  priests,  upon  whose 
faces  are  carved  the  lines  of  ignorance  and  ava- 
rice, stretch  out  soiled  hands  for  the  more  filthy 
lucre  their  nation  has  provided  for  them  to  give. 

Now  turn  to  these  who  have  built  cathedrals 
and  churches.  Words  fail  to  picture  their  mag- 
nificence. Their  walls  and  ceilings  are  deco- 
rated with  angels,  in  colors  that  rival  a  sunset 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  ART  183 

or  a  rainbow.     Their  floors  are  covered  with 
velvet  rugs  of  silk  and  wool  that  deaden  every 
footfall.    Their  carvings  and  their  statues  rival 
in  their  perfection  the  work  of  their  Creator, 
and  their  windows,  each  a  work  of  art  in  itself, 
softens  the  light  of  the  noonday  sun  and  sheds 
a  halo  about  the  bowed  heads  of  the  worshipers 
as  they  kneel  before  their  God.    Their  priests 
are  clad  in  robes  of  silk  and  satin  such  as  be- 
come the  servants  of  the  God  they  worship. 
And  the  architecture  and  the  cathedral  and  the 
painting  and  the  sculpture  and  the  carpet  and 
the  windows,  yea,  and  the  priest  and  his  robes 
are  products  or  by-products  of  the  gospel  of 
the  God  they  serve. 

It  is  only  when  we  thus  consider  the  differ- 
ence in  the  details  of  the  civilization  of  the  East 
and  the  West,  and  see  how  far  they  are  behind 
us  in  every  respect  of  national,  social,  religious, 
scientific,  and  individual  progress,  and  then  try 
to  account  for  these  differences  on  some  racial 
hypothesis,  that  we  see  how  impossible  it  is. 
We  only  need  to  go  back  twenty  centuries^  in 
history  to  find  the  nations  that  are  now  lagging 
behind,  leading  the  race;  and  the  nations,  or 
peoples— for  they  were  then  only  savage  tribes, 


184     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

and  they  did  not  then  deserve  to  be  called  na- 
tions— are  now  so  far  in  advance  in  their  knowl- 
edge of  the  laws  and  powers  of  nature,  their 
ability  to  acquire  wealth;  that  is,  to  transform 
the  crude  stuffs  of  nature  into  things  of  beauty 
and  usefulness,  and  provide  sanitary  conditions, 
comfort,  and  better  facilities  in  every  respect 
for  living  one's  life.    Let  me  illustrate: 

Twenty  years  ago,  when  I  arrived  in  Peking, 
it  was  the  custom  of  the  city  authorities  to  clean 
the  city  seweTS  in  the  springtime.  These  sewers 
were  great  underground  waterways,  which  re- 
ceived not  only  the  washings  from  the  streets, 
but  from  the  stables,  the  homes,  the  kitchens, 
and  the  closets;  and  because  the  city  was  so 
level  and  without  a  water  system,  and  as  there 
was  but  little  rain  ecxcept  during  the  months  of 
July,  August,  and  September,  there  was  no  way 
of  flushing  the  sewers.  Everything  that  washed 
into  them  from  September  till  April  or  May 
remained  there,  decayed,  and  formed  a  stench 
that  words  fail  to  describe.  One  of  the  main 
sewers  passed  through  our  mission  compound, 
opening  into  the  canal  just  outside  of  the  back 
gate  of  the  mission  and  the  front  gate  of  the 
Peking  University;  and  as  we  were  constantly 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  ART  185 

passing  from  one  to  the  other  we  had  occasion 
to  notice  it  more,  perhaps,  than  others  would, 
though  every  one  who  lived  in  Peking  in  those 
days  will  confirm  what  I  am  now  writing. 

During  the  months  of  March,  April,  or  May, 
about  the  time  when  every  one  is  having  spring 
fever,  the  city  authorities  ordered  the  sewers 
cleaned;  and  for  days  men  with  shovels  and 
pails  would  go  down  into  the  sewers,  shovel  up 
or  ladle  up  this  decayed  filth,  and  pile  it  up  on 
the  sidewalk,  where  it  was  left  for  days  or  weeks 
to  dry.  The  streets  at  that  time  were  all  dirt 
roads.  Much  of  this  that  had  washed  into  the 
sewer  had  washed  off  the  street;  it  was  there- 
fore used,  as  soon  as  it  was  sufiiciently  dry,  to 
build  up  the  street  again.  That,  in  a  single  sea- 
son, would  have  a  tendency  to  destroy  the  sani- 
tary conditions  of  the  city.  But  when  we  re- 
member that  this  same  process  has  been  gone 
through  every  spring  for  more  than  a  thousand 
years,  we  will  understand  that  most  of  the  sur- 
face soil,  which  is  mud  and  steam  in  the  hot, 
rainy  months  of  July  and  August,  and  blows 
about  as  dust  during  at  least  eight  months  of 
the  other  ten,  is  not  conducive  to  good  sanitary- 
conditions. 


186    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

But  this  is  not  all.  I  have  referred  to  the 
fact  that  Peking  was  without  a  water  system 
with  which  to  flush  her  sewers.  Her  only  water 
system  was  a  well,  a  wheel-barrow,  or  a  mule- 
cart,  and  a  man.  These  wells  were  sunk  down 
through  this  surface-soil  that  was  saturated 
with  the  filth  of  a  dozen  centuries,  walled  up 
with  blocks  of  stone  in  such  a  loose  way  as  not 
to  prevent  the  surface-water  running  in;  and 
while  the  deeper  ones,  from  which  the  water 
was  used  constantly,  obtained  most  of  their  wa- 
ter from  a  deep  subsoil,  the  water  in  all  of  them 
was  ** bitter,"  and  this  only  because  of  the  filth 
that  leaked  in  from  the  top ;  so  that  the  people 
not  only  breathed  filth  in  the  air,  but  they  drank 
filth  in  the  water. 

The  Chinese  are  very  fond  of  fruit,  of  which 
they  eat  large  quantities.  They  are  also  fond 
of  melons  and  cucumbers,  most  of  which  they 
eat  skins,  seeds,  and  all.  All  the  stores— fruit, 
dried  fruit,  grocery,  and  others — are  open  to 
the  street.  They  are  without  doors  or  windows 
in  front,  in  lieu  of  which  they  have  movable 
boards,  which  are  taken  down  during  the  day. 
Many  of  the  fruit  and  melon  venders  spread 
their  wares  out  on  movable  tables  on  the  street, 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  AUT  187 

or  carry  them  about  on  small  platforms  or  tubs 
swung  on  the  ends  of  a  pole,  cut  in  slices  ready 
for  sale,  like  the  watermelons  sold  by  the  Ital- 
ians and  others  in  our  great  cities.  North 
China  is  noted  for  its  dust  storms,  especially 
during  the  autumn,  winter,  and  spring.  The 
dust  blows  in  clouds,  settles  upon  the  slices  of 
melons  and  the  cucumbers,  clings  to  the  fuzz 
of  the  peach  and  the  apricot,  and  is  eaten  by  the 
himgry  and  poorly-fed  people  because  in  the 
autumn  fruit  is  cheaper  than  bread ;  and  so  they 
not  only  breathe  and  drink  filth,  but  they  eat 
it  as  well. 

Again,  the  homes  of  most  of  the  Chinese — 
not  only  in  the  great  cities,  but  in  the  country 
as  well — are  hovels  rather  than  houses.  They 
are  built  of  mud  or  brick,  thatched  with  straw 
or  corn-stalks,  or  covered  with  tiles.  Seldom 
do  they  have  ceilings,  while  the  floors  are  of 
clay  or  very  porous  brick.  One-half  of  the  floor 
is  built  up  a  foot  and  a  half  above  the  other 
half,  and  this  constitutes  the  bed.  It  is  built 
of  brick,  with  a  network  of  flues.  Under  the 
front  is  a  small  fireplace,  over  which  is  a  pot 
in  which  they  do  much  of  their  cooking.  They 
build  their  fire  under  the  bed ;  their  fuel  being 


188    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

weeds,  cornstalks,  old  floor-mats,  or  anything 
that  will  bum.  The  smoke,  soot,  gas,  dirt — all 
go  np  under  the  bed,  cooking  the  food,  heating 
the  bricks,  and  then  coming  out  into  the  room 
and  covering  the  walls  and  rafters  with  soot. 
The  people  spit  upon  the  floor;  it  sinks  into 
the  porous  bricks;  they  wash  their  hands  and 
face  and  their  dishes,  and  then  sprinkle  the  floor 
with  the  water,  and  various  other  fluids  and 
filth  find  their  way  into  the  brick  floors.  Their 
windows  are  paper,  which  becomes  torn,  and 
the  dust  blows  in ;  pigs  and  chickens  also  share 
with  the  family  the  protection  of  the  home.  In- 
deed, the  word  for  home  is  a  pig  under  a  roof. 
From  what  we  have  said  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  people — the  great  mass  of  the  people^ — 
breathe,  drink,  eat,  and  live  among  filth,  and  the 
wonder  of  the  ages  is  that  there  are  four  hun- 
dred millions  of  Chinese  to-day,  and  the  only 
way  it  can  be  accounted  for,  I  think,  is  because 
they  live  so  much  out  of  doors. 

Now  let  us  grant  that  there  is  much  in  our 
own  great  cities  that  is  not  ideal ;  that  you  can 
duplicate  all  that  I  have  said  about  China  by 
similar  conditions  at  home;  it  still  remains  a 
fact  that  in  China  it  is  the  rule — the  govern- 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  ART  189 

ment ;  while  here  it  is  the  exception  and  in  spite 
of  the  government,  and  usually  only  among 
those  of  the  first  generation  in  America.  It  is 
possible  here  to  have  pure  air,  pure  water,  pure 
food,  and  their  dirt  must  be  within  their  own 
doors ;  for  as  soon  as  their  feet  touch  the  brick 
or  cement  sidewalk  they  touch  cleanliness,  which 
in  a  generation  at  least  banishes  dirt  from  the 
home. 

But  the  most  serious  result  of  this  dirt  is 
not  its  influence  upon  the  individual,  but  its  in- 
fluence upon  the  public  and  upon  the  world. 
Every  few  years  there  breaks  out  in  these  great 
filthy  Oriental  cities  a  plague  which  strikes  ter- 
ror to  the  hearts  not  only  of  the  people  among 
whom  it  starts,  but  in  the  hearts  of  those  also 
at  the  remotest  ends  of  the  earth.  Cholera,  bu- 
bonic and  pneumonic  plague,  dengue,  beriberi, 
and  others.  Do  we  ever  ask  ourselves  why  all 
these  plagues  take  their  rise  in  Asia?  And  do 
we  try  to  answer  that  why?  One  word  tells  the 
tala  It  is  dirt.  Nay,  a  better  word  is  filth ;  for 
dirt  does  not  express  the  filthiness  of  Asiatic 
dirt.  It  can  not  be  expressed  in  the  English  lan- 
guage; for  the  English  language,  since  it  has 
been  a  language,  has  never  lived  long  among 


190    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

such  Tsang.  That  is  the  word  that  expresses 
it  — Tsang. 

There  is  but  one  remedy  for  this  dirt,  and 
that  remedy  is  the  gospel.  Wherever  the  gospel 
has  gone,  cleanliness  has  gone,  and  up  to  the 
present  the  world  has  never  produced  a  clean 
city  where  the  influences  of  the  gospel  have  not 
gone.  If  I  did  not  believe  in  foreign  missions 
for  any  religious  reasons,  I  would  believe  in 
and  support  them  for  the  sanitary  influence  they 
have  had  upon  the  world.  A  member  of  a  great 
bathtub  manufacturing  firm  told  me  at  the  Du- 
quesne  Club  in  Pittsburgh  recently  that  since 
the  missionaries  have  gone  to  China  they  are 
shipping  thousands  of  bathtubs  to  that  great 
empire. 

When  any  one  of  these  plagues,  such  as 
cholera,  strikes  a  city  or  a  village  the  people  are 
in  terror.  The  same  is  true  of  the  people  in 
India  as  in  China.  At  six  o'clock  all  are  well. 
At  seven  a  father  comes  out  with  terror  writ- 
ten on  his  face  and  announces : 

^'My  son  is  dead." 

**What  diseased'  some  one  asks. 

''That  disease,"  he  replies,  afraid  to  say 
the  word  ''cholera;"  or,  if  he  be  a  Hindoo,  be 


BY-PRODUCTS  IN  ART  191 

answers,  '*Tlie  disease  of  the  wind/'  for  they 
think  the  wind  brings  it. 

In  a  few  moments  some  one  announces  an- 
other death  in  another  part  of  the  city,  and  by 
nightfall  there  may  be  a  hundred  people  fall 
victims  to  the  scourge. 

In  a  village  near  Pei-tai-ho,  our  summer  re- 
sort of  North  China,  the  cholera  appeared.  The 
people  worshiped  their  gods.  They,  as  a  final 
resort,  celebrated  the  New  Year's  festival  in 
August,  to  try  to  deceive  the  cholera  god  and 
persuade  him  that  he  had  struck  the  wrong  time 
of  the  year.  They  did  everything  but  clean  the 
wells  and  clean  up  the  village.  The  cholera  god 
was  not  deceived.  They  finally  decided  to  es- 
cort the  god  over  to  our  foreign  settlement. 
This  they  did  during  the  night.  An  English 
gentleman  who  had  come  from  Tangshan  ill  a 
day  or  two  before  died  the  next  morning;  the 
cholera  had  had  its  run  in  the  village,  and  they 
persuaded  themselves  that,  having  gotten  a  for- 
eign victim,  he  was  satisfied. 

In  the  spring  of  1897  two  members  of  the 
senior  class  of  the  Peking  University,  at  the 
close  of  the  summer  term,  went  to  spend  their 
vacation  preaching  at  a  church  up  outside  the 


192    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Great  Wall.  They  passed  the  summer  quietly 
and  pleasantly,  and  with  renewed  health  and 
vigor  at  the  beginning  of  September  started 
back  to  Peking.  They  walked  most  of  the  way, 
and  when  they  reached  the  city  gate  were  tired 
and  hungry.  Not  having  heard  any  rumors 
of  plague  in  the  city,  they  purchased  some 
peaches  from  a  fruit- vender  inside  the  city  gate. 
These  they  ate,  at  once  fell  ill,  and  one  of  them 
died  that  night,  and  the  other  the  following 
morning. 

I  repeat  here  that  the  health  of  the  world 
depends  upon  the  spread  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ.  If  any  one  is  disposed  to  question  this 
and  say  that  it  is  simply  the  progress  of  civiliza- 
tion, I  ask.  Why  is  it  that  civilization— the  civ- 
ilization of  cleanliness — ^has  gone  only  with  the 
gospel,  or  where  the  gospel  has  gone?  and  it 
remains  for  them  to  answer  the  question  on 
some  other  hypothesis. 


CHAPTEE  XIV 
BY-PEODUCTS  IN  EEFLEX  INFLUENCE 

One  evening  I  was  going  on  the  trolley  from 
Bramford,  Conn.,  where  I  had  been  giving  a 
lecture,  to  New  Haven,  where  I  expected  to 
take  the  midnight  train  for  Albany. 

On  the  same  car  with  me  was  a  man  with 
abdominal  capacity  sufficient  for  a  brace  of 
aldermen.  We  were  soon  engaged  in  conver- 
sation, and  it  was  not  long  until  he  wanted  to 
know  where  I  had  been. 

'^I  have  just  come  from  Bramford,"  I  in- 
formed him. 

*^In  business  r'  he  said,  interrogatively. 

*^No;  I  was  giving  a  lecture,"  I  answered. 

''What  subject?"  he  asked. 

''China,"  I  replied. 

"Been  to  China  I"  he  again  said,  with  a 
rising  inflection. 

"Yes;  I  have  been  there  sixteen  years,"  I 
informed  him. 

' '  Gee !  how  could  you  live  among  the  Chinks 
that  length  of  time?"  he  exclaimed. 

13  193 


194     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

^'Teaching,"  I  replied. 

^ ^ Government  school ?"  again  interroga- 
tively. 

^'Methodist  school,"  said  I,  indicatively. 

^'What,  missionary!"  again  with  surprise. 

*^Sort  of,"  I  replied. 

'^Well,  you  know  I  think  a  man  is  wasting 
his  time  going  over  there  to  convert  those 
heathen,"  he  volunteered. 

^ '  Ah,  indeed !    You  converted  ?  "  I  asked. 

*^Not  much,"  he  answered. 

*^What  business?"  I  inquired. 

*^ Liquor,"  he  replied. 

'  ^  Saloon  1 ' '  interrogatively. 

*^Yes,"  sheepishly. 

*^Well,  you  know  I  think  a  man  is  wasting 
his  time  trying  to  make  paupers  and  heathen 
out  of  American  boys,"  I  said. 

He  did  not  answer  for  awhile;  then:  *^Do 
you  think  all  those  Chinese  will  be  lost  if  they 
do  not  become  Christians?" 

''I  hope  not,"  I  replied. 

'^Well,  if  they  can  be  saved  without  being 
Christians,  what  is  the  use  of  spending  so  much 
money  going  over  to  convert  them?"  he  in- 
quired, as  though  he  had  me  cornered. 


REFLEX  INFLUENCE  195 

*^IIow  much  do  you  spend  annually  to  get 
them  converted?''  I  asked. 

'^ Nothing,"  he  replied;  ''but  that  is  dodg- 
ing the  question/' 

''You  can  go  from  Boston  to  New  York  by 
way  of  Buffalo,  can't  you?"  I  asked. 

"Yes,"  he  replied;  "but  it  is  a  long  way 
around. ' ' 

"You  can  go  from  Bramford  to  New  Haven 
by  road  wagon,  too;  can't  you!" 

"Yes;  but  it  is  not  very  comfortable,"  he 
answered. 

"A  bit  slow,  too;  isn't  it!"  I  volunteered. 

"Sure,"  he  replied. 

"Why  do  you  spend  so  much  money  build- 
ing railroads  and  trolley  lines  instead  of  going 
by  road  wagon!"  I  asked. 

"More  comfortable,  more  direct,  quicker, 
and  more  sure,"  he  replied. 

"That  is  what  Christianity  is  as  compared 
with  any  other  religion!"  I  suggested. 

"But  they  do  not  want  your  religion,"  he 
objected. 

"On  the  same  principle,  Jesus  Christ  ought 
not  to  have  come  to  the  world.  The  world  did 
not  want  Him.    It  had  no  place  for  Him — ^no 


196     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

decent  place  for  Him  to  be  born,  no  house  for 
Him  to  live  in,  no  pillow  for  His  bead,  and  only 
a  cross  on  wbich  to  die.  He  did  not  wait  till 
tbe  world  wanted  Him.  He  came  because  the 
world  needed  Him." 

*^Well,  you  know,"  he  said,  *'I  think  the 
Church  is  losing  its  hold  on  the  big  men  even 
here  in  America." 

*'Do  you  think  so!"  I  asked. 

''I  think  so,"  he  added.  ^'At  least  most  of 
the  men  I  know  do  not  go  to  church." 

*^Did  they  ever  go!"  I  asked. 

**Not  much,  I  suppose,"  he  answered. 

'^Then  the  Church  never  had  any  hold  on 
them  to  lose;  did  it!"  I  inquired. 

**Well,  perhaps  not,"  he  answered;  '*but  do 
you  think  that  the  biggest,  wealthiest,  and  most 
influential  men  in  America  take  much  interest 
in  Church  work!" 

*^I  have  just  been  attending  a  number  of 
laymen's  missionary  conventions,"  I  replied. 
'*At  a  missionary  dinner  given  for  men  m  De- 
troit we  had  twelve  hundred  men  present. 
Then  we  went  to  Syracuse,  N.  Y.,  where  we 
had  fourteen  hundred  men  at  a  similar  dinner. 
At  Schenectady  we  had  twelve  hundred.    At  the 


REFLEX  INFLUENCE  197 

Astoria  Hotel  in  New  York  we  had  eighteen 
hundred  of  the  most  influential  men  in  New 
York  at  a  three-dollar  dinner  on  the  night  of 
the  worst  blizzard  I  have  ever  been  out  in." 

* '  That  's  all  right, ' '  he  answered ;  ^ '  but  were 
those  among  the  most  influential  men  in  New 
Yorkr'  he  asked. 

*^That  is  a  pretty  hard  question  to  answer 
in  so  many  words,"  I  admitted.  **But  you 
think  Christianity  is  losing  its  hold  on  America, 
do  you!"  I  asked. 

**0n  the  big  men,  yes,"  he  replied. 

*'The  men  control  the  sentiment  of  the  Na- 
tion; do  they  not!"  I  asked. 

*'Yes,"  he  replied. 

^  *  The  ordinary  men  or  the  influential  men  ! ' ' 
I  continued. 

**The  influential  men,  of  course,''  he  an- 
swered. 

*  *  Do  you  know  about  how  many  people  there 
are  in  the  United  States  at  present?"  I  in- 
quired. 

''About  ninety  million,"  he  replied. 

''And  how  many  of  those  are  Christians!" 
I  continued. 

"You  Ve  got  me  now,"  he  answered. 


198     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

^^ There  are  about  thirty-three  millions,''  I 
explained. 

*^Yes;  but  most  of  those  are  women  and 
children/'  he  objected.  ^' Those  are  not  all 
men." 

^^ Quite  right,"  I  admitted.  '^But  that 
thirty-three  millions,  most  of  them  women  and 
children,  control  the  sentiment  of  the  United 
States  and  make  it  a  Christian  country." 

He  opened  his  mouth  as  if  to  speak.  Then 
he  dropped  his  head  as  if  to  think.  Just  then 
the  car  began  to  slow  up  and  the  conductor 
called  out: 

^'Change  for  the  New  York,  New  Haven, 
and  Hartford  Depot, ' '  and  I  got  up  to  leave  for 
the  train.  My  saloon-keeper  friend  offered  me 
his  hand,  and  as  I  took  it  he  said, 

^'Well,  old  man,  I  didn't  believe  much  in 
missions,  but  you  know  your  job  all  right;" 
and  I  took  the  compliment  as  a  confession  on 
his  pa,rt  that  his  argument  had  been  answered 

As  I  boarded  the  train  at  New  Haven  there 
were  a  score  or  more  of  gentlemen  in  dinner- 
suits  who  got  on  with  me.  I  noticed  them ;  but 
as  I  entered  the  train  I  was  thinking  of  what 
he  had  said :  that  the  Church  is  losing  its  hold 
upon  the  men. 


REFLEX  INFLUENCE  199 

I  had  not  had  time  to  change  my  dress-coat 
after  the  lecture,  and  as  I  took  off  my  overcoat 
and  laid  it  down,  one  of  the  gentlemen  sat 
down  beside  me. 

**Well,''  said  he,  ^'it  was  a  big  dinner." 

*^What  dinner?"  I  asked. 

*^  Were  n't  yon  at  the  dinner T'  he  inquired, 
looking  at  my  coat,  without  answering  my  ques- 
tion. 

**No;  I  have  been  giving  a  lecture  up  at 
Bramf ord, ' '  I  explained.  ^ '  What  dinner  do  you 
refer  to?" 

*'The  dinner  given  to  President  Taft,"  he 
answered. 

*^ Where?"  I  inquired. 

**Here  at  New  Haven — at  Yale,"  he  ex- 
plained.   ^^ Did  n't  you  know  about  it?" 

*^No;  I  just  came  down  from  Albany  this 
evening."  I  answered,  trying  to  justify  my  ig- 
norance of  such  an  event. 

^^Well,  it  was  a  big  dinner,"  he  went  on. 
** There  were  a  lot  of  men  there." 

**How  many?"  I  inquired,  with  as  much  in- 
terest as  I  could  summon. 

*  *  Eleven  himdred ! "  he  answered,  and  looked 
at  me  as  though  he  expected  me  to  be  aston- 
ished. 


200    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

I  was  not  a  particle  surprised.  I  said  to  my- 
self: ^*  Twelve  hundred  at  Detroit,  fourteen 
hundred  at  Syracuse,  twelve  hundred  at  Sche- 
nectady, where  they  have  scarcely  any  students 
in  college  to  draw  from,  and  no  Bob  Taft,  sou 
of  the  President,  as  they  have  at  YaJe,  and 
eighteen  hundred  at  a  three-dollar  dinner  in  an 
awful  blizzard"— it  all  ran  through  my  mind 
in  less  time  than  I  can  write  it ;  and  all  these  at 
laymen's  missionary  dinners — and  I  looked  at 
him  calmly  and  asked, 

*' Could  any  one  go  that  wanted  toT' 

''Could  if  he  had  a  ticket,"  he  replied. 

* '  College  students  and  all !  "  I  continued. 

''Certainly,"  he  answered. 

"And  men  from  all  the  surrounding  coun- 
try?" I  went  on. 

"We  are  all  from  out  of  town?"  he  an- 
swered, by  way  of  explanation. 

"Yes,  a  good  big  dinner,"  I  admitted,  re- 
membering that  comparisons  are  always  odious 
to  the  fellow  on  whom  they  reflect.  But  I  could 
not  forget  our  laymen's  dinners,  nor  could  I 
help  silently  rejoicing  that  the  Master  draws 
better  than  the  President.  Not  for  a  moment 
did  my  thoughts  reflect  upon  the  President. 


REFLEX  INFLUENCE  201 

No  one  would  rejoice  more  than  I  at  the  popu- 
larity of  the  man  who  is  using  all  his  influence 
to  bring  about  among  the  governments  the 
peace  the  Master  taught.  But  I  went  to  sleep 
that  night  with  a  glad  heart. 

The  next  morning,  when  I  boarded  the  train 
at  Albany  to  go  up  to  Saratoga  Springs,  my 
friend  Fred  B.  Fisher,  of  Boston,  came  and  sat 
down  beside  me. 

**Well,  Headland,  we  had  a  big  time  in  Bos- 
ton last  night,"  was  his  first  remark. 

*'What  was  it?''  I  asked. 

**A  dinner  given  to  Chapman  and  Alexan- 
ider/'  he  replied. 

**The  revivalists  r '  I  asked. 

**Yes,''  he  answered. 

**Ah!  Is  old  Unitarian  Boston  giving  din- 
ners to  revivalists  in  these  days  T '  I  exclaimed. 

**Yes;  we  had  a  big  time,"  he  repeated. 

*'How  many  were  present?"  I  asked. 

**Foiir  thousand  people,"  he  replied. 

**What!  Four  thousand  people  to  meet  two 
revivalists!"  I  exclaimed.  *^Why,  they  only 
had  eleven  hundred  last  night  at  a  dinner  in 
honor  of  President  Taft  at  Yale." 

**0h,  well,"  exclaimed  Fisher,  **Taft  may 


£02    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

be  President  of  the  United  States,  but  Jesus 
Christ  is  King ! ' '  And  I  could  not  but  wish  that 
my  saloon  friend  of  the  trolley  car  and  every- 
one else  who  thinks  that  the  gospel  is  losing  its 
hold  upon  the  men  could  have  heard  Fisher's 
bass  voice  ring  out  the  words  above  the  roar 
of  the  railroad  train,  ^' Jesus  Christ  is  King!'* 

I  then  began  to  reflect  upon  some  of  the  in- 
cidents which  happened  during  our  laymen's 
campaign  which  were  themselves  by-products 
of  missions  in  their  reflex  influence  upon  the 
home  Church  or  Churches.  It  is  a  well-known 
fact  that  missions,  or  the  call  of  the  world,  is 
about  the  only  subject  upon  which  all  the 
Churches  can  unite.  But  call  a  general  mis- 
sionary rally,  and  every  Church — Presbyte- 
rian, Congregationalist,  Baptist,  Lutheran, 
Christian,  Methodist,  and  Episcopalian — are  all 
ready  to  join  forces. 

At  the  Syracuse  convention  all  the  denomi- 
nations were  represented,  and  all  joined  in 
with  an  equal  zeal.  Among  those  who  were 
present  there  were  two  young  Episcopalian 
rectors.  They  were  both  enthusiastic.  With 
beaming  face  one  of  them  said  to  me, 

*'What  a  pity  we  were  ever  divided!" 


REFLEX  INFLUENCE  203 

And  as  I  looked  at  Hs  black  cloth,  clean 
white  linen,  and  sparkling  eyes,  I  could  not  but 
echo, 

''What  a  pity!"  And  as  I  gazed  at  them 
I  continued:  ''Here  we  are  all  together.  You 
Episcopalians  are  the  cream,  and  we  Llethodist 
Episcopalians  are  the  milk.  The  cream  is  a 
good  deal  richer  than  the  milk,  but  there  is  a 
good  deal  more  milk  than  there  is  cream — what 
a  pity  we  were  ever  skimmed!" 

Is  n't  it  a  misfortune  that  we  are  not  all  go- 
ing as  one  great  moral  and  spiritual  army,  knee 
to  knee  and  shoulder  to  shoulder,  with  the 
sword  of  the  Spirit  and  the  shield  of  faith 
fighting  the  devil  and  the  dark,  non-Christian 
world  in  the  interests  of  truth  and  the  light  of 
the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  instead  of  focusing 
our  minds  on  our  own  little  denominational  dif- 
ferences ? 

What  would  you  think  of  a  lot  of  neighbor- 
ing farmers  who,  when  their  fields  were  ripe 
unto  the  harvest,  instead  of  gathering  in  the 
golden  grain,  sat  about  discussing  their  boun- 
dary lines,  while  the  rich  harvest  rotted  on  the 
stalks  ?  When  we  come  home  from  the  mission 
fields,  where  we  have  divided  up  our  territory 


204     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

and  united  our  educational  forces,  and  find  a 
half  dozen  little  Churches  in  a  village  where 
there  ought  to  be  only  one,  or  at  most  two,  and 
as  many  half-supported  pastors  discussing 
their  denominational  differences,  it  often  seems 
to  us  that,  while  the  rich  harvest  of  the  world 
is  waiting  for  reapers,  we  at  home  are  going 
about,  wasting  much  of  our  time  tinkering  our 
line  fences. 

I  have  no  disposition  to  complain  of  our 
Protestant  Churches.  But  think,  if  you  can, 
from  the  names  of  our  Protestant  Churches,  of 
a  single  one  that  is  built  upon  any  great  saving 
principle  or  doctrine.  Presbyterian — a  Church 
where  presbyters  or  elders  have  an  important 
influence  in  the  government,  but  whose  doc- 
trines of  salvation  are  practically  the  same  as 
those  of  the  Congregationalist,  who  *' wants  to 
be  his  own  pope,  his  own  priest,  his  own  bishop, 
his  own  presiding  elder,  his  own  preacher,  and 
his  own  boss.''  Or  like  that  of  the  Baptist, 
which  is  built  upon  one  single  rite,  which  the 
greatest  of  the  apostles  would  not  administer, 
but  left  to  some  less  important  functionary. 
Episcopalian — a  Church  governed  by  a  bishop. 
Methodist     Episcopalian  —  a     Church    whose 


REFLEX  INFLUENCE  205 

founder  was  never  anything  but  an  Episcopa- 
lian on  fire  with  an  evangelistic  spirit;  and  so 
on  to  the  end.  Any  two  of  these  Churches  could 
be  trusted  with  the  spiritual  interests  of  any 
village  of  two  or  three  thousand  people. 

Another  interesting  incident  in  the  laymen's 
campaign  was  at  Dayton,  Ohio.  I  expected  a 
good  big  meeting,  but  was  hardly  prepared  for 
what  I  found.  I  knew  that  Dayton  was  a  city 
of  less  than  a  hundred  thousand  people,  and  I 
hoped  that  there  might  be  a  thousand  at  the 
dinner.  When  I  arrived  I  went  to  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  secretary  and 
asked, 

*^How  many  tickets  have  you  sold  for  the 
dinner!" 

** Sixteen  hundred  and  twenty,"  he  an- 
swered, ^^and  then  we  had  to  stop  because  the 
chickens  refused  to  enter  the  ministry." 

That  was  an  old  chestnut  that  I  had  heard 
before ;  but  then  it  struck  me  that  this  was  not 
a  ministerial  meeting,  and  the  chickens  had  no 
reason  to  object  on  that  score ;  and  so  I  said, 

'*  Why  did  n't  you  persuade  the  chickens  that 
it  was  a  lay  movement,  and  they  would  have 
given  their  necks  to  be  in  it!" 


206     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

But  there  was  no  occasion  for  having  more 
present,  for  the  largest  church  in  the  city  was 
far  too  small  to  hold  the  people  who  crowded 
to  the  meetings. 

At  the  close  of  the  meeting  in  St.  Louis,  Mr. 
Campbell  White  asked  that  any  of  the  men  who 
wanted  to  do  something  worth  while  should 
meet  him  in  the  church  parlors.  There  were 
about  twenty-five  or  thirty  men  present — cer- 
tainly among  the  most  influential  men  of  the 
city.  Mr.  White  told  them  he  wanted  to  estab- 
lish a 

Fouk-Square  League, 
the  principal  features  of  the  constitution  of 
which  were  that  each  person  who  joined  it  would 
pledge  himself  to  give  into  four  figures,  one 
'thousand  dollars  per  year  or  more,  to  foreign 
missions,  to  get  three  others  to  join  him,  to 
quadruple  his  own  gifts  to  missions,  and  to 
quadruple  the  gifts  of  his  Church. 

Hardly  had  Mr.  White  finished  reading  this 
constitution  when  a  man  in  the  rear  of  the 
audience  arose  and  said: 

^^Mr.  White,  I  have  been  thinking  of  some- 
thing of  this  kind,  though  I  did  not  have  the 
genius  to  express  it.  I  want  you  to  put  my 
name  down  as  the  first  member  of  this  league." 


REFLEX  INFLUENCE  207 

Three  others  asked  that  Mr.  White  would 
put  their  names  down.  Then  a  gentleman  sit- 
ting in  the  front  row  said  in  a  quiet  way, 

' '  Mr.  White,  put  my  name  down. ' '  He  was 
a  friend  of  Mr.  White,  who  in  surprise  said: 

*^Why,  that  is  more  than  you  have  been 
giving  for  missions,  is  it  not?" 

*^I  never  gave  a  thousand  cents  before,"  he 
answered. 

Another  gentleman  arose  and  said: 

*^Mr.  White,  I  do  not  feel  able  to  give  a 
thousand  dollars,  but  I  would  like  to  give  ^ve 
hundred  dollars,  and  I  would  like  to  organize 
our  whole  Church,  getting  each  person  to  give 
$500,  $250,  $100,  $50,  or  $25,  and  have  them 
all  members  of  this  league." 

**No,  no;"  they  said,  ''let  us  keep  it  four- 
square, not  allowing  any  one  to  become  a  mem- 
ber unless  he  gives  into  four  figures." 

* '  All  right, ' '  he  said ;  ' '  put  my  name  down. ' ' 

Two  others,  without  rising  from  their  chairs, 
said,  ''Put  my  name  down." 

Then  a  gentleman  to  the  left  rose  quietly 
and  said : 

''When  I  was  a  boy  my  father  got  me  a  po- 
sition in  a  bank  at  ten  dollars  a  week.  My 
father  left  me  the  heritage  of  a  good  name.    I 


208    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

now  happen  to  be  president  of  the  Bank  of  Com- 
merce.   Put  my  name  down." 

The  men  said  to  me  afterward,  *' Yon  do  not 

know  what  it  means  when  E ,  the  president 

of  the  Bank  of  Commerce,  talks  like  that  among 
this  group  of  men." 

They  continued  to  join  until  there  were  nine 
members  out  of  that  group  of  twenty-five  or 
thirty  men. 

E arose  quietly  and  said:  *^We  ought 

to  have  ten  men  out  of  this  bunch.  I  have  a 
boy.  He  is  only  fifteen,  but  he  will  grow.  Put 
his  name  down." 

The  next  day  these  ten  men  had  a  luncheon 
together,  and  this  same  man  brought  the  names 
of  his  two  brothers,  I  was  told,  and  offered  them 
as  members.  Is  the  Church  losing  its  hold  upon 
the  influential  men! 

In  arranging  the  seventy-five  cities  in  which 
they  proposed  to  hold  conventions,  no  attention 
was  given  to  Grand  Junction,  Colo.,  a  little 
town  on  the  west  slope  of  the  Eockies,  half  way 
between  Denver  and  Salt  Lake  City.  Now, 
Grand  Junction  is  an  enterprising  place.  A 
place  where  the  men  drain  the  mountain  streams 
into  their  orchards  and  raise  apples  by  the  car- 


REFLEX  INFLUENCE  209 

load ;  where  they  put  oil-stoves  out  if  they  fear 
a  frost,  and  refuse  to  allow  nature  to  nip  their 
buds. 

When  the  people  of  Grand  Junction  heard 
that  there  were  to  be  seventy-five  great  lay- 
men's conventions  held  in  as  many  cities  across 
the  continent,  in  their  own  words,  they  ^^got 
busy/'    They  wrote  Mr.  White, 

''We  want  a  convention." 

Mr.  White  wrote  back: 

''We  have  arranged  for  all  the  conventions 
we  can  furnish  speakers  for.  It  will  be  im- 
IDOSsible  to  give  you  one.'' 

They  wrote  back: 

''We  are  going  to  have  a  convention.  We 
will  arrange  for  it,  and  you  stop  off  three  or 
four  speakers  on  their  way  from  Denver  to 
Salt  Lake  City." 

It  was  done.  I  was  one  of  the  speakers. 
The  town  only  had  some  two  thousand  people 
at  that  time;  but  when  we  arrived  at  the  hall 
there  were  present  at  the  dinner  five  hundred 
men  and  one  woman. 

"How  is  this,"  I  asked,  as  I  sat  down  at  the 
table,  "you  have  a  woman  present  at  this  lay- 
men's dinner?" 

14 


210    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

*^Well/'  they  explained,  ^'this  woman  rode 
one  whole  day  on  horseback  and  another  whole 
day  in  a  stage  to  get  here.  When  she  arrived 
we  said  to  her; 

''  'This  is  not  a  meeting  for  women.  This 
is  for  men  only.' 

**  *  Do  n't  yon  worry,'  she  replied,  'when  this 
meeting  opens  I  '11  be  there.'  " 

And  she  was  there.  She  was  introduced  to 
that  body  of  ^ve  hundred  men,  and  she  sat  in 
the  front  row  in  the  gallery  at  every  meeting, 
taking  notes,  that  she  might  go  back  and  arouse 
an  interest  in  all  the  members  of  her  Church 
in  the  great  work  of  missions  throughout  the 
world. 


CHAPTER  XV 
THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  WORLD'S  PEACE 

I  LIKE  to  discuss  world-problems  with  men  who 
know,  or  with  men  who  ought  to  know.  For 
instance,  I  should  like  to  have  discussed  war 
with  a  man  like  Napoleon.  He  was  such  a 
bloody  brute.  Not  a  great  man,  but  a  great 
butcher.  He  knew  how  to  win  a  battle.  Just 
decide  to  win  at  all  hazards,  then  keep  out  of 
danger  yourself,  and  have  no  concern  how  many 
lives  you  sacrifice.  He  thought,  as  a  great  many 
people  think,  that  ^^  Providence  is  on  the  side 
of  the  heavy  artiller>^  ^  *  Now,  it  is  a  fact  that, 
other  things  being  equal,  the  side  that  has  the 
heavy  artillery  is  the  most  likely  to  win.  But 
the  fact  that  I  win  in  one  particular  battle  is 
no  evidence  that  Providence  is  on  my  side ;  nor 
is  the  fact  that  you  lose  any  evidence  that 
Providence  is  against  you.  The  danger  with 
most  of  us  is  in  our  interpretation  of  Provi- 
dence. We  too  often  take  it  that  Providence 
is  with  us  when  we  succeed,  and  against  us  when 
we  fail. 


^n    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

To  have  discussed  war  with  Washington 
would  have  been  a  very  different  matter.  He 
had  a  different  view  of  life.  His  views  of  suc- 
cess were  unlike  those  of  Napoleon,  and  his 
opinion  of  Providence  was  not  that  of  a  disin- 
terested being  who  was  on  the  side  of  the  heavy 
artillery,  regardless  of  the  justice  of  the  cause. 

I  was  invited  to  give  a  talk  to  the  Twentieth 
Century  Club  recently  in  Boston.  After  the 
luncheon  I  had  a  talk  with  Nathan  Haskell  Dole, 
a  prominent  literary  man  of  New  England. 
During  the  conversation  I  said, 

*  ^  I  fancy  that  the  great  battles  of  the  future 
will  most  likely  be  fought  at  sea.'* 

'*I  doubt  if  there  will  be  any  great  battles 
of  the  future, ' '  he  remarked. 

^^What  do  you  mean?"  I  asked. 

'  *  In  my  judgment, ' '  he  returned,  *  *  within  the 
next  ten  years  we  will  have  all  our  international 
difficulties  settled  by  arbitration." 

^^I  wish  I  could  be  as  sanguine,"  I  said. 
'^But  come  to  think  of  it,  war  is  only  interna- 
tional fisticuffing.  If  any  of  us  members  of  this 
club  had  any  differences  we  would  settle  them 
neither  with  our  fists  nor  with  arms.  We  would 
talk  the  matter  over  and  settle  them  by  mutual 


THE  WORLD'S  PEACE  213 

concession  and  agreement.  In  this  age,  in  pri- 
vate life,  it  is  only  the  uncultured,  uneducated 
bum  who  is  ready  to  shed  his  coat  and  go  in  to 
settle  his  private  differences  with  his  fists/' 

**Do  you  think  soT'  he  said. 

' 'I  am  sure  of  it, "  I  answered.  ^ ^  Nationally 
the  world  is  not  quite  up  to  its  individual  cul- 
tura  Twenty  years  ago  such  prize-fighters  as 
were  popular  in  America  could  find  a  place 
almost  anywhere  to  fight.  Now  it  is  prac- 
tically impossible  to  find  a  place  in  the  civilized 
world  where  the  law  will  allow  them  to  make 
a  ring." 

**Yon  mean  in  the  Christian  world,"  he  said. 

'^It  is  all  the  same,"  I  answered.  **I  con- 
sider that  one  of  the  greatest  triumphs  of  our 
age — to  have  stopped  prize-fighting — and  one 
of  the  greatest  steps  toward  international 
peace." 

**And  you  say  you  think  that  nationally  we 
are  not  quite  up  to  our  sentiment  individually?" 
he  continued. 

** Certainly,"  I  answered.  '^The  world 
cared  nothing  for  Japan  until  she  knocked  out 
China  and  Eussia,  and  then  we  began  to  regard 
her  as  a  first-class  power.    I  felt  like  regarding 


214     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

her  as  a  first-class  bully,  and  for  some  time,  I 
confess,  I  looked  upon  Japan  as  being  in  the 
John  L.  Sullivan  state  of  national  existence — a 
national  fisticuff er — and  it  remains  to  be  proven 
whether  she  is  or  not.  Both  in  the  case  of  China 
and  Russia  she  seemed  to  be  spoiling  for  a  fight. 
But  that  was  not  what  I  was  about  to  say.  At 
the  present  time  the  world  has  decided  against 
individual  fisticuffing,  and  there  are  good  pros- 
pects of  its  deciding  against  international  fisti- 
cuffing as  well.  And  why  not?  The  nation  is 
only  a  combination  of  individuals ;  and  there  is 
no  reason  why  we  should  not  soon  rise  as  high 
in  National  as  in  individual  sentiment.  The 
prospects  are  that  within  the  next  ten  years  we 
will." 

*'But  do  you  think  all  the  nations  are  up  to 
this  high  standard!"  he  asked. 

**A11  but  two,"  I  answered. 

*'And  which  two  are  those!"  he  inquired. 

'*I  do  not  care  to  name  them,"  I  replied; 
**but  it  would  not  require  much  guessing  to  dis- 
cover which  two  rulers  and  peoples  are  the  ones 
who  seem  to  be  most  spoiling  for  a  fight." 

* '  Then  you  think  that  there  are  better  meth- 
ods of  settling  international  difficulties  than  by 


THE  WORLD'S  PEACE  21^ 

fighting,  and  that  these  methods  are  practical?' ' 
he  said. 

^'Certainly,"  I  answered.  ''That  is  a  per- 
fectly sane  idea  of  Jesus  Christ  when  He  said, 
'If  he  strike  yon  on  the  right  cheek,  turn  the 

other/'' 

''How!"  he  asked. 

"Two  dogs  can't  fight  if  one  won't  fight," 
I  answered. 

' '  Quite  right, ' '  he  replied ; ' '  but  it  leaves  the 
one  looking  awfully  like  a  coward." 

"To  those  who  are  looking  for  cowards," 
I  replied.  ''But  it  is  better  for  both  yourself 
and  posterity  to  go  off  with  a  whole  head  and 
propagate  yourself,  than  to  be  chewed  up  and 
maimed. ' ' 

"But  the  other  fellow  goes  and  propagates 

himself  too,"  he  urged. 

' '  Quite  right, ' '  I  replied ;  "  but  he  that  taketh 
up  the  sword  shall  perish  with  the  sword." 

"Yes;  but  do  you  believe  that!"  he  an- 
swered. 

"Nothing  more  true  in  history,"  I  replied. 
"It  does  not  mean  that  the  man  who  takes  up 
the  sword  will  not  conquer  his  opponent  at  that 
particular  time;  but  the  man  who  takes  up  the 


216     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

sword  often  enough  will  ultimately  perish  with 
the  sword.  All  history  testifies  to  that  fact.  Of 
the  ancient  peoples  who  started  out  together 
only  two  remain — the  Chinese  and  the  Jew. 
They  loved  peace.  They  never  fought  except 
on  strong  provocation.  The  Assyrians,  the 
Babylonians,  the  Medians,  Persians,  Egyptians, 
the  Macedonians,  even  the  Greeks  and  Eomans 
who  took  up  the  sword  perished  with  the  sword, 
while  the  Chinese  and  the  Jew  have  gone 
calmly  on." 

**It  does  look  as  though  a  long  perspective 
is  in  favor  of  peace,''  he  remarked;  ^^but  the 
Jew  is  a  man  without  a  country." 

**But  he  lives.  He  has  not  perished.  He 
loved  peace,  and  he  has  been  preserved.  He 
rejected  Jesus  Christ,  and  he  has  been  a  man 
without  a  country  ever  since,"  I  remarked. 

**But  do  you  believe  that  the  rejection  of 
Jesus  Christ  has  left  him  as  a  man  without  a 
country?"  he  asked. 

*^The  man  with  the  best  type  of  religion  is 
the  man  who  rules  the  world,"  I  said,  without 
answering  his  question. 

** Another  thing,"  I  continued.  *^He  that 
taketh  up  the  dreadnaught  shall  perish  with  the 


THE  WORLD'S  PEACE  217 

dreadnaught.  There  is  nothing  more  sane  than 
this.  It  has  always  been  true  that  he  who  fights 
long  enough  will  always  find  some  one  ivho  can 
fight  better  than  he  can;  and  then  it  is  all  up 
with  him.  Even  Jim  Jeffries  will  find  his  Jack 
Johnson.  He  who  knocks  somebody  down  will 
always  find  somebody  or  his  sympathizers  to 
knock  him  down;  but  he  who*  helps  somebody 
up  will  always  find  somebody  who  is  anxious 
to  help  him  up  higher." 

^^It  sounds  very  sane  to  hear  you  talk  that 
way,''  he  remarked.  ^^I  had  never  thought  of 
it  in  that  light  before,  and  I  confess  that  it  does 
seem  that  the  only  safe  thing  for  permanent 
preservation  is  permanent  peace.  Then  you 
would  not  be  in  favor  of  the  Chinese  arming 
themselves  to  try  to  withstand  the  powers  of 
Europe,"  he  remarked. 

^^If  I  were  the  adviser  to  the  Chinese  Gov- 
ernment, ' '  I  replied,  ^  ^  I  would  urge  them  never 
to  build  a  navy  and  never  to  equip  an  army. 
I  would  say  to  the  European  Powers:  'You 
pretend  to  believe  in  Christianity,  and  you  pre- 
tend to  believe  in  peace.  You  want  me  to  con- 
duct a  great  educational,  social,  and  business 
reform.    To  do  this  will  require  a  vast  outlay, 


218     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

and  I  will  not  have  either  the  time  or  the  funds 
to  carry  on  such  an  internal  reform  and  at  the 
same  time  prepare  to  resist  the  incursions  of 
those  who  have  been  studying  warlike  methods 
for  centuries.  I  will  conduct  my  internal  re- 
form, and  I  will  trust  your  principles  of  justice 
and  fair  play  to  see  that  I  am  protected  while 
doing  it.'  " 

''But,  would  that  be  safe?"  he  asked. 

''The  only  way  to  find  out  whether  it  was 
safe,"  I  replied,  "would  be  to  test  it.  It  would 
be  right,  and  it  is  almost  always  safe  to  do 
right;  is  it  not?"  I  asked,  with  a  smile.  "Be- 
sides, the  Chinese  are  not  a  warlike  people." 

"That  is  contrary  to  the  general  opinion 
about  the  Chinese ;  is  it  not  ?  "  he  asked.  ' '  They 
are  usually  supposed  to  be  a  yellow  peril." 

' '  Only  by  those  who  do  not  know, ' '  I  replied. 
"Those  who  understand  the  Chinese  character 
and  the  history  of  the  people  know  that  they 
have  never  fought  a  great  battle  during  their 
whole  history.  They  do  not  believe  in  fighting, 
in  war,  nor  in  soldiers.  Twenty  years  ago  they 
did  not  even  have  police  on  their  streets.  Every 
man  was  a  policeman.  If  two  men  got  into  a 
scrap,  the  crowd  would  gather  around,  several 


THE  WORLD'S  PEACE  219 

men  would  get  hold  of  the  two  who  were  fight- 
ing— if  pulling  hair  and  scratching  can  be  called 
fighting;  for  the  Chinese  never  learned  the 
h easily  art  of  self-defense — and  they  would 
pull  them  apart,  lead  them  in  opposite  direc- 
tions, allowing  them  to  revile  each  other,  their 
friends,  relatives,  and  ancestors,  until  their 
anger  was  exhausted  or  their  spite  satisfied,  and 
then  send  each  in  his  own  direction.  In  divid- 
ing up  the  people  they  say: 

**The  highest-grade  man  is  the  scholar, 

*^The  second-grade  man  is  the  farmer 
(he  is  a  producer), 

**The  third-grade  man  is  the  laborer 
(he  is  also  a  producer), 

**The  fourth-grade  man  is  the  merchant 
(he  is  only  an  exchanger), 

*  *  The  fifth-grade  man  is  the  soldier 
(he  is  a  destroyer) ; 
and  they  say,  'Hao  jen  pu  tang  ping' — *  A  good 
man  will  not  be  a  soldier.'  They  also  say,  ^Jen 
tang  ping  shih  ju  tieh  ta  ting' — ^A  man  made 
into  a  soldier  is  like  a  piece  of  iron  made  into 
a  nail ; '  it  is  the  last  thing  you  can  make  of  him. 
Now,  a  people  who  crystallize  their  sentiments 
about  the  soldier  into  such  statements  as  that 


220     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

will  never,  in  my  judgment,  b©  a  peril,  except  in 
the  arts  of  peace." 

^^Yon  say  the  Chinese  have  never  been  a 
fighting  people;  but  did  not  the  Mongols  over- 
run Europe?''  he  asked. 

**Yes,  the  Mongols;  but  not  the  Chinese.  It 
took  the  Mongols  one  hundred  years  to  conquer 
the  Chinese  by  the  arts  of  war.  The  Chinese 
then  set  to  work  to  conquer  them  by  the  arts 
of  peace.  They  quietly  began  to  eat  and  digest 
them,  and  in  eighty  years'  time  there  was  no 
Mongol  language  at  court,  no  Mongol  literature, 
no  Mongol  society,  and  the  descendants  of  the 
Great  Khan,  whom  Marco  Polo  wrote  about  in 
such  glowing  terms,  were  a  race  of  emasculated 
rulers  whom  the  Chinese  vomited  back  on  their 
Mongol  plains  and  deserts,  a  better  educated, 
a  more  civilized,  but  a  less  warlike  people. 

*  ^  The  same  is  true  of  the  Manchus.  It  took 
the  Manchus  more  than  a  hundred  years  to  con- 
quer the  Chinese,  and  indeed  there  is  no  more 
thrilling  chapter  in  all  history  than  the  conquest 
of  the  Chinese  by  their  present  rulers;  nor  is 
there  any  greater  evidence  of  the  Chinese  be- 
ing anything  but  a  warlike  people  than  that 
same  episode.    It  is  as  follows : 


THE  WORLD'S  PEACE  221 

**  *Two  Manchu  tribes  were  engaged  in  a 
dispute  which  continued  through  so  many  years 
that  the  Ming  Emperor  decided  that  it  should 
cease.  He  therefore  took  sides  with  one  tribe 
and  settled  the  dispute.  The  son  of  the  chief 
against  whom  the  emperor  decided — then  a 
mere  boy — said  to  himself,  *^I  will  punish  that 
Ming  Emperor  when  I  become  a  man.  ^ '  When 
he  reached  the  years  of  maturity,  at  the  head 
of  his  tribe,  with  one  hundred  and  fifty  men,  he 
conquered  his  father's  adversary.  He  then 
went  from  one  tribe  to  another  until  all  Man- 
churia was  under  his  leadership.  Then  he  un- 
dertook to  conquer  Mongolia,  and  it  was  not 
long  until  he  had  an  army  of  two  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  men  at  his  back.  He  then  started 
for  the  Ming  dynasty;  but  the  great  wall  kept 
him  out,  and  it  was  not  until  he  and  his  son 
had  passed  away  that  his  grandson  was  placed 
upon  the  throne. 

*  ^  *  The  dynasty  against  which  he  fought  was 
the  Ming — purely  Chinese — and  one  can  hardly 
imagine  a  great,  warlike  people,  a  people  who 
are  likely  to  be  a  yellow  peril  with  a  sword,  to 
have  allowed  themselves  to  have  been  con- 
quered in  that  way  and  to  have  had  forced  upon 


222     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

them  the  world-despised  queue;  for  the  queue  is 
a  Manchu,  and  not  a  Chinese,  appendage.    They 
were  conquered  by  the  sword ;  but  again  by  the 
arts  of  peace  they  set  about  conquering  their 
conquerors.    They  gave  them  the  Chinese  lan- 
guage, so  that  the  Manchu  language  in  China  is 
practically  a  thing  of  the  past.    They  gave  them 
Chinese  literature.     They  made  them  promise 
never  to  interfere  with  the  Chinese  social  cus- 
toms, and  especially  the  habits  of  the  women. 
And  at  the  present  time,  in  the  history  of  the 
nations  and  of  the  world,  who  ever  thinks  of 
considering  the  Manchus?     People  sometimes 
speak  of  the  Manchus  ruling  China,  and  that  is 
about  all  the  world  knows  of  them.    The  Man- 
chus are  more  civilized,  more  learned,  more  ar- 
tistic, more  cultured,  more  refined  than  they 
were  when  they  conquered  their  conquerors ;  it 
is  only  fair  to  say  they  are  now  conquered  by 
the  arts  of  peace,  and  are  themselves  so  emas- 
culated as  a  dynasty  of  rulers  that  only  one 
child  has  been  bom  to  the  last  three  emperors — 
none  to  the  last  two — and  a  woman  has  held  the 
reigns  of  government  for  the  past  forty-seven 
years.     And  it  may  be  interesting  to  give  a 
chapter  on  her  life;  for  no  greater  woman  ap- 


THE  WORLD'S  PEACE  223 

peared  in  the  world  during  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury than  Tzu  Hsi — ^the  great  empress  dowager 
of  China. 

*  *  ^  The  peace  of  the  world,  when  it  comes — 
and  it  is  far  on  the  way — will  be  a  by-product 
of  the  gospel  and  of  missions.'  " 


CHAPTER  XVI 

SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  IN  INDIVIDUAL 
GOVERNMENT 

In  1894  the  Christian  women  from  England  and 
America  and  the  Christian  women  of  China  de- 
cided to  give  a  present  to  the  late  empress 
dowager  on  her  sixtieth  birthday.  After  think- 
ing of  various  things,  they  decided  to  give  her 
a  New  Testament.  Now,  in  order  to  appreciate 
the  importance  of  this  gift  it  will  be  necessary 
to  know  something  of  the  early  history  of  this 
great  woman. 

The  empress  dowager  was  bom  in  a  little 
home  in  Peking,  of  poor  bnt  well-connected  par- 
entage, about  the  year  1834.  At  sixteen  years 
of  age  she  was  taken  into  the  palace  and  made 
the  concubine  of  the  Emperor  Hsien  Feng,  a 
position  that  no  Manchu  family  would  choose 
for  their  daughter ;  for  of  the  hundreds  of  girls 
that  enter  the  palace  in  this  capacity  scarcely 
any  of  them  are  ever  heard  of  again. 

Unlike  most  of  the  concubines,  however,  this 


INDIVIDUAL  GOVERNMENT  225 

girl  began  to  study,  taught  by  the  eunuchs ;  and 
she  continued  at  her  books  until  she  could  read 
the  classical  language  as  well  as  many  of  the 
officials,  and  wield  her  brush  in  writing  the  ideo- 
graphs so  well  that  the  character  for  ''long 
life''  or  ''happiness"  written  by  her  hand  and 
presented  to  an  official  is  preserved  as  an  heir- 
loom in  his  family.  She  then  devoted  herself  to 
pictorial  art,  and  her  name  will  go  down  in  his- 
tory and  appear  in  the  art-encyclopedias  with 
the  name  of  all  the  great  artists  of  her  dynasty. 

Her  devotion  to  her  studies,  her  politeness 
to  her  superiors,  and  her  general  character  and 
conduct  led  her  to  be  selected  from  the  hun- 
dreds of  her  associates  as  the  ' '  first  concubine. ' ' 
The  empress  was  the  second  wife  of  the  em- 
peror— his  first  wife  having  died.  She  was  not 
a  strong  character;  she  was  childless,  and  the 
first  concubine  having  given  birth  to  a  son  was 
raised  to  the  position  of  wife  and  soon  began 
to  take  a  leading  place  in  her  husband's  favor 
as  well  as  in  the  influence  of  the  court. 

Her  husband  died  when  her  son  was  three 
years  old,  and  in  spite  of  much  opposition  on 
the  part  of  certain  of  the  princes  she  contrived 
to  have  her  son  placed  upon  the  throne  and  her- 

15 


226     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

self  made  regent  during  his  minority,  which 
gave  her  fifteen  years  of  rule  over  all  China. 
During  these  years  she  was  busy  also  with  other 
matters.  She  contrived  to  have  her  younger 
sister  married  to  the  younger  brother  of  the 
emperor,  her  husband,  that  in  this  way  she 
might  provide  an  heir  for  the  throne  from  her 
own  family  in  case  of  the  death  of  her  son. 

Her  son  died  just  as  he  reached  his  majority, 
and  on  the  night  of  his  death  she  had  her  sis- 
ter ^s  oldest  son,  a  lad  of  three  years,  brought 
into  the  palace ;  and  the  next  morning,  when  she 
announced  the  death  of  her  son  she  proclaimed 
her  nephew  as  his  successor,  with  herself  as 
regent  again  during  his  minority.  This  gave 
her  another  tenure  of  fifteen  years  or  more  as 
ruler  over  all  China.  And  when  she  was  about 
to  die  she  had  her  grand-nephew,  this  same  sis- 
ter's grandson,  brought  into  the  palace  and  saw 
to  it  that  he  was  established  upon  the  throne  be- 
fore she  took  her  departure.  We  have,  there- 
fore, in  the  empress  dowager  the  spectacle  of  a 
little  girl,  born  in  a  humble  home,  becoming  the 
concubine  of  an  emperor,  the  wife  of  an  em- 
peror, the  mother  of  an  emperor,  the  maker  of 
two  emperors,  the  regent  for  two  emperors,  and 


INDIVIDUAL  GOVERNMENT  227 

the  ruler  of  all  China  for  the  space  of  forty- 
seven  years  in  a  country  where  women  are  sup- 
posed to  have  no  power.  Discover,  if  you  can, 
another  woman  who  lived  during  the  nineteenth 
century  with  such  an  extraordinary  career! 

It  was  this  woman  to  whom  the  Christian 
women  from  England  and  America  and  the 
Christian  women  of  China  decided  to  give  a 
birthday  present  on  the  event  of  the  most  im- 
portant birthday,  the  60th,  in  the  life  of  a  Chi- 
nese monarch. 

The  ladies  considered  the  matter  carefully, 
and  after  thinking  of  various  things  they  de- 
cided to  give  her  a  copy  of  the  New  Testament. 
They  made  new  type  with  which  to  print  it. 
They  printed  it  on  the  best  quality  of  foreign 
paper  in  the  best  style  of  the  printer's  art. 
They  bound  it  in  silver — embossed  bamboo  pat- 
tern—enclosed it  in  a  silver  box;  this,  again,  in 
a  red  plush  box;  this,  in  turn,  in  a  beautifully 
carved  teak  wood  box,  and  this,  finally,  in  an  or- 
dinar>^  pine  box.  They  sent  it  to  the  British 
and  American  ministers,  requesting  them  to 
send  it  to  the  foreign  office,  and  them  to  send 
it  to  the  empress  dowager. 

Now,  there  was' a  lot  of  ceremony  ahout  that. 


228     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

But  the  Chinese  love  ceremony.  Sir  Robert 
Hart  tells  a  story  which  illustrates  how  the  Chi- 
nese love  ceremony.  He  says  that  soon  after  he 
went  to  China  he  was  calling  upon  a  Chinese 
official.  He  sat  bolt  upright  upon  his  chair. 
A  Chinese  official  never  leans  to  one  side  or  the 
other  when  on  official  business.  He  reached 
down,  took  a  roll  of  thin  paper  out  of  his  boot, 
quietly  unrolled  one  sheet,  rolled  the  rest  up 
slowly  and  put  it  into  his  boot  again.  He  then 
used  this  sheet  as  a  handkerchief,  passed  it  to 
his  servant,  who  received  it  in  both  hands,  and 
in  a  dignified  way  he  went  and  deposited  it  in 
the  paper-basket.  I  need  not  say  what  one  can 
not  do  with  dignity  and  ceremony  in  China. 

We  can  imagine  this  ordinary  pine  box  com- 
ing into  the  palace.  It  does  not  look  promising, 
and  there  are  some  who  might  think  that  it 
would  be  opened  before  it  reached  her  majesty. 
They  do  not  know  what  attention  the  empress 
dowager  gave  to  all  her  domestic  and  private 
affairs  if  they  think  so.  Her  presents  were 
opened  in  her  presence,  and  woe  betide  the  per- 
son who  took  liberty  with  her  affairs.  It  may 
not  look  promising;  but,  like  all  Chinese,  she 
did  not  judge  the  inside  from  the  appearance 


INDIVIDUAL  GOVERNMENT  229 

of  the  outside.  The  Chinese  do  everything  the 
opposite  of  what  we  do. 

Go  down  street  in  any  of  our  great  cities, 
and  you  will  find  all  the  most  beautiful  things  in 
the  show  windows.  Not  so  in  China.  I  had  the 
pleasure  of  entertaining  Mr.  William  Jennings 
Bryan  in  Peking  when  he  was  making  his  trip 
around  the  world.  And  let  me  say  just  here  that 
Mr.  Bryan  visited  the  missions,  studied  mission 
work,  and  when  he  returned  to  America  was 
capable  of  talking  intelligently  about  mission- 
ary enterprises. 

I  had  written  a  guide-book  to  Peking,  and 
I  offered  to  show  him  about  the  city.  As  we 
were  going  down  Liu  Li  Chang,  the  great  book 
and  curio  street,  I  stopped  before  one  of  the 
stores  and  remarked, 

^^We  will  go  in  here." 

*^That  is  a  junk  shop,  isn't  it?"  he  asked. 

*^Not  entirely,"  I  answered,  '* though  there 
may  be  some  junk  in  it." 

We  entered.  There  was  not  a  single  piece 
of  good  ware  in  the  front  room.  We  went  into 
the  next  room  back,  where  we  found  some  fairly 
good  things.  The  next  room  back  of  that  had 
some  very  good  things;  but  all  his  very  best 


230     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

goods  were  locked  up  in  a  little  cubbyhole  at 
the  very  rear  of  his  premises,  the  opposite  of 
what  you  would  find  it  in  America. 

The  empress  dowager  has  this  pine  box 
opened,  and  in  it  she  finds  a  beautifully-carved 
teak-woo4  box,  carved  the  same  as  the  frame  of 
her  portrait  now  in  the  Smithsonian  Institution 
in  Washington. 

When  this  box  was  opened  she  found  within 
it  a  red  plush  box.  Red  is  the  sign  of  happiness 
in  China.  The  bride's  dress  is  red.  The  chair 
in  which  she  rides  is  red.  All  your  presents  at 
New  Year's  time  are  wrapped  in  red  paper  and 
tied  with  a  red  string.  Everything  that  wishes 
one  happiness  is  red;  and  hence  these  ladies 
had  silently  wished  the  empress  dowager  happi- 
ness on  her  sixtieth  birthday  by  this  red  box. 

This,  in  turn,  was  opened,  and  in  it  she  found 
a  silver  box.  The  basis  of  our  monetary  system 
is  gold ;  that  of  the  Chinese  is  silver ;  hence  the 
silver  box.  And  when  she  opened  that  she 
found  within  it  the  Word  of  God  bound  up  in 
silver. 

I  do  not  know  what  influence  that  New  Tes- 
tament had  upon  the  empress  dowager,  but  that 
same  day  the  boy  emperor,  her  nephew,  whom 


INDIVIDUAL  GOVERNMENT  231 

she  had  placed  upon  the  throne,  sent  a  eunuch 
to  the  American  Bible  Society  and  bought  an 
Old  and  New  Testament  such  as  were  being  sold 
to  his  people. 

One  ought  to  know  something  about  the  de- 
velopment of  this  boy,  for  he  was  as  much  of 
a  genius  in  his  way  as  his  aunt.  Taken  out  of 
a  big  beautiful  world  at  three  and  a  half  years 
of  age,  where  he  had  other  children  to  play  with, 
and  where  he  could  go  about  at  will,  into  a  little 
world,  a  half  square  mile  in  size,  of  brick-paved 
earth,  surrounded  by  three  great  walls,  what 
hope  was  there  of  his  ever  learning  anything 
either  about  the  world  or  about  the  people  he 
was  to  govern?  Shut  up  in  the  palace  with 
thousands  of  eunuchs  and  concubines,  maid- 
servants and  the  two  dowager  empresses,  the 
only  male  figure  in  the  palace,  not  a  child  to 
play  with,  what  hope  was  there  for  the  lad*? 

The  eunuchs  went  out  and  brought  him  Chi- 
nese toys.  These  he  did  not  like.  They  then 
found  a  foreign  store  on  Legation  Street,  and 
they  purchased  some  foreign  toys,  which,  by 
being  wound  up,  would  go  of  their  own  energy. 
That  was  what  he  wanted — something  that 
would  move.    As  he  grew  older  they  bought  him 


232     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

other  toys,  more  suited  to  his  age — Swiss 
watches  and  cuckoo  clocks.  I  went  through  his 
palace  in  1901.  There  was  a  long  window  on 
the  south  side  of  the  room  which  was  filled  with 
clocks  from  one  end  to  the  other,  all  ticking  a 
different  time.  When  telling  this  to  a  friend 
not  long  since,  he  remarked, 

' '  They  were  not  there  to  keep  time — simply 
to  tick-le  the  emperor.'' 

That  is  what  they  were  for — to  tickle  the 
emperor.  There  were  tables  about  the  room 
and  clocks  on  the  tables.  There  was  a  beautiful 
desk  with  a  clock  upon  it.  I  sat  down  on  a  large 
French,  plush-upholstered  chair,  and  a  music- 
box  began  to  play  in  the  seat  of  the  chair ;  and 
this  set  off  an  electric  fan  that  was  on  the  wall 
near  by,  which  kept  me  cool  on  that  hot  August 
day.  It  was  the  emperor's  reading  chair.  He 
could  sit  and  read,  and  listen  to  the  music,  and 
be  kept  cool  by  the  fan.  The  child  had  gotten 
all  the  wonderful  toys  of  modem  times  into 
the  palace. 

He  then  heard  of  the  huo  km  che,  the  fire- 
wheel  cart,  and  he  had  a  small  railroad  built 
along  the  west  shore  of  the  lotus  lake  in  the 
jmlace  grounds,  and  two  small  cars  and  an  en- 


INDIVIDUAL  GOVERNMENT  233 

gine  made  in  Europe,  and  he  could  take  the 
court  for  a  ride  on  this  newly-constructed 
merry-go-round.  Then  he  heard  of  the  huo  lun 
chuan,  and  he  got  steam  launches,  which  he  put 
into  the  lotus  lake  and  the  lake  at  the  summer 
palace ;  and  these  he  could  hitch  to  the  empress 
dowager's  barge  and  take  the  court  ladies  for 
a  ride  on  the  lake.  Then  he  heard  of  sending 
messages  by  a  flash  of  lightning.  That  was  what 
he  wanted.  That  would  move;  and  so  he  got 
the  telegraph  into  the  palace,  and  soon  it  was 
established  throughout  the  empire.  He  was 
then  told  that  it  was  possible  to  talk  to  a  dis- 
tance of  fifty  or  one  hundred  miles.  I  wonder 
if  you  remember  the  first  time  you  ever  heard 
that.  I  do,  and  I  did  not  believe  it.  We  had 
an  old  farmer  down  in  Pennsylvania,  and  when 
they  told  him  it  was  possible  to  talk  so  that 
you  could  be  heard  to  a  distance  of  fifty  or  a 
hundred  miles,  he  said: 

^^It  can't  be  done.  My  son  John  kin  holler 
as  loud  as  any  man  in  this  keounty,  an'  he 
can't  be  heard  more  than  two  miles." 

Kuang  Hsii  was  ready  to  believe  anything 
he  heard  about  these  foreigners,  and  so  he  got 
the  telephone  into  the  palace,  and  now  the  capi- 


^34     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

tal  and  the  coast  cities  are  cobwebbed  with  tele- 
phones. Then  he  heard  of  the  ^Halk-box,"  and 
the  officials  came  to  Peking  University,  bought 
our  phonograph,  and  sent  that  into  the  palace. 
Later  we  sent  him  a  cinematograph ;  in  a  word, 
that  child,  taken  out  of  this  big  beautiful  world 
at  three  and  a  half  years  of  age,  and  penned 
up  inside  of  three  great  walls,  moved  all  the 
great  inventions  of  modem  times  into  the 
palace. 

Then  he  got  the  New  Testament.  That  was 
the  inspiration.  He  began  studying  the  Gospel 
of  Luke.  I  know  this,  because  my  assistant 
pastor  and  one  of  my  Church  members  were 
invited  into  the  palace  daily  to  talk  with  the 
eunuchs,  and  the  one  who  stood  behind  the  em- 
peror's chair  while  he  studied  told  my  friends 
that  the  emperor  had  a  portion  of  the  Gospel 
of  Luke  copied  in  large  characters  every  day, 
which  he  had  spread  out  on  the  table  before 
him,  and  he  added, 

*'I  can  look  over  his  shoulder  and  see  what 
he  is  studying ;  it  is  Lu  chia  fu  yin — ^the  Gospel 
of  Luke." 

After  the  emperor  had  studied  the  Gospel 
for  a  short  time  there  were  reports  about  Pe- 


INDIVIDUAL  GOVERNMENT  235 

king  that  he  was  going  to  become  a  Christian. 
Indeed,  the  ennnchs  told  my  friends  that  the  em- 
peror would  line  them  np  and  catechise  them 
as  to  whom  they  worshiped,  nor  would  he  pass 
them  until  they  confessed  that  they  worshiped 
J  esus  Christ ;  while  two  of  the  court  ladies  told 
Mrs.  Headland  that  the  emperor  said  that  when 
he  went  to  the  temple  he  did  not  worship  the 
idols,  but  he  worshiped  Tien  elm,  the  God  of 
heaven  (the  Christian  name  for  God). 

While  the  emperor  was  studying  the  Gospel 
a  eunuch  came  to  me  and  said : 

''The  emperor  has  heard  that  there  are  a 
great  many  books  translated  out  of  your  hon- 
orable Western  languages  into  our  miserable 
Chinese  language,  and  he  would  like  to  have 
some.'' 

I  was  in  charge  of  two  tract  societies  and 
the  books  of  the  Society  for  the  Distribution  of 
General  and  Christian  Knowledge,  as  well  as 
the  college  text-books,  and  so  I  sent  him  some. 

The  next  day  he  came  again,  saying,  ''The 
emperor  wants  some  more  books." 

I  sent  him  more  books,  and  the  following  day 
he  came  with  the  same  request.  Every  day  for 
six  weeks  that  efunuch  came  from  the  palace  to 


236     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

get  more  books  for  the  emperor,  and  I  sent  him 
every  book  I  could  find  that  had  been  trans- 
lated or  written  by  Christians.  Sometimes  I 
had  nothing  but  a  Christian  sheet  tract  to  send 
him.  Finally  I  went  into  my  wife  ^s  library  and 
took  out  her  Chinese  medical  books  and  sent 
them  to  him.  Indeed,  he  bought  every  book 
that  had  been  written  or  translated:  Roman 
Catholic  or  Protestant,  religious,  scientific,  or 
social. 

One  day  the  eunuch  saw  my  wife's  bicycle 
standing  on  the  veranda. 

^^Na,  shih  shenmo  chef — ^What  kind  of  a 
cart  is  thatf  he  asked. 

^^Na  chiu  shih  he  tze  hsing  che — That  is  a 
self -moving  cart, ' '  I  answered. 

^'Tsen  mo  chi — How  do  you  ride  it  I"  he 
continued. 

I  took  it  down  and  rode  a  few  times  around 
the  compound. 

'^Che  shih  huai,  tsen  mo  pu  tao,  'Chiu  yu 
Hang  he  lun  tze.  This  is  queer ;  why  does  n  't  it 
fall  down.     It  only  has  two  wheels." 

' '  When  a  thing  is  moving  it  can 't  fall  down, ' ' 
I  explained.  Which,  by  the  way,  will  apply  to 
other  things  than  bicycles. 


INDIVIDUAL  GOVERNMENT  237 

The  next  day  he  came  and  said,  **The  em- 
peror wants  this  bicycle." 

I  sent  my  wife's  bicycle  in  to  the  emperor, 
and  not  long  afterwards  it  was  reported  in  Pe- 
king that  in  trying  to  ride  the  bicycle  his  queue 
had  become  tangled  up  in  the  rear  wheel  and 
he  had  had  a  fall ;  and  so  he  gave  up  trying  to 
ride  the  bicycle,  as  many  another  person  has 
done. 

But  he  got  all  the  great  inventions  of  mod- 
em times ;  then  he  bought  the  Bible,  which  led 
him  to  secure  all  kinds  of  Western  books. 
These  he  studied  for  three  years,  from  1895  till 
1898,  when  he  began  to  issue  his  wonderful 
edicts. 

Among  his  first  edicts  was  one  in  which  he 
ordered  that  a  Board  of  Education  should  be 
established,  with  a  university  in  Peking  and  a 
college  in  the  capitals  of  each  of  the  provinces ; 
his  object  being  eventually  to  have  a  system  of 
public  school  education  throughout  the  empire. 

Twenty  years  ago  there  was  just  one  school 
established  by  the  Chinese  Government  in 
which  foreign  studies  were  taught,  and  this  was 
opened  by  a  man  who  went  to  China  as  a  mis- 
sionary, and  who  remains  there  as  a  missionary 


238    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

to-day.  As  a  result  of  this  edict  we  have  at  the 
present  time  more  than  forty  thousand  schools, 
colleges,  and  universities,  in  which  every  phase 
of  foreign  learning  is  taught;  and  it  is  worthy 
of  note  that  the  first  six  colleges  and  universi- 
ties opened  by  the  government  were  through  the 
influence  and  under  the  superintendence  of  five 
men  who  went  to  China  as  missionaries. 

Another  of  these  important  edicts  was  to 
establish  a  Board  of  Railroads;  for  the  only 
method  of  travel  in  China  from  time  immemo- 
rial was  by  mule-cart,  mule-litter,  sedan-chair, 
or  houseboat — all  of  them  slow  and  most  of 
them  uncomfortable. 

As  a  result  of  this  edict  and  the  sentiment 
generated  by  the  new  system  of  education,  in- 
stead of  the  one  hundred  miles  of  railroad 
twenty  years  ago,  they  now  have  seven  thou- 
sand miles  completed,  five  thousand  miles  more 
projected,  and  they  have  just  succeeded  in  bor- 
rowing fifty  millions  of  dollars  from  Europe 
and  America  to  continue  their  railroad  con- 
struction. 

A  third  important  edict  was  to  establish  a 
Board  of  Mines.  I  have  seen  old  blind  women 
in  midwinter,  under  the  old  regime,  sitting  on 


INDIVIDUAL  GOVERNMENT  239 

the  bare  ground  feeling  about  them  if  per- 
chance they  might  find  a  few  weeds  or  corn- 
stalks to  light  a  fire  under  their  brick  bed  and 
cook  their  morsel  of  food  and  heat  their  bed, 
oblivious  of  the  fact  that  just  beneath  them 
were  great  veins  of  coal,  if  only  they  dared  to 
open  the  earth  and  take  it  out.    They  did  not 
dare  do   so.     Why!     Because  the  earth  was 
filled  with  spirits.     There  were  spirits  in  the 
earth,  in  the  air,  in  the  trees,  in  the  mountains, 
in  the  valleys— spirits  everywhere.    One  could 
not  dig  a  well  without  having  a  small  shrine 
to  bum  incense  to  the  spirit  of  the  well.    Trees 
—CWeng  shen  Ziao— became  gods.    But  where 
the  gospel  and  its  by-products  of  intelligence 
and  progress  go,  the  spirits  can  not  stay.    And 
so  the   spirits   are  practically  banished  from 
China,  and  they  are  sinking  great  shafts  deep 
down  into  the  earth  and  taking  out  millions  of 

tons  of  coal. 

The  emperor  issued  twenty-seven  such  edicts 
in  about  twice  that  many  days,  all  of  them 
equal  in  importance  to  those  mentioned  in  the 
reformation  of  old  China.  Do  you  ask  why 
the  young  emperor  was  led  to  do  this!  I  an- 
swer, because  the  Christian  women  from  Eng- 


240     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

land  and  America  and  the  Christian  women  of 
China  sent  a  New  Testament  into  the  palace. 
There  were  other  forces  at  work,  forces  which 
had  a  tremendous  influence  upon  the  young  man. 
He  was  beginning  to  get  a  vision  of  the  weak- 
ness of  his  own  country — the  weakness  of  their 
old  religious  system,  their  old  educational  sys- 
tem, their  old  agricultural  system,  their  old  mil- 
itary system,  and  the  strength  of  the  countries 
represented  by  the  missionaries  and  the  minis- 
ters of  the  foreign  governments.  As  great  a 
man  as  Chang  Chih-tung  wrote,  about  this  time, 
in  a  book  which  the  emperor  ordered  printed  in 
large  editions  and  circulated  throughout  the 
empire :  ^  ^  Convert  the  temples  and  monasteries 
of  Buddhists  and  Taoists  into  schools.  To-day 
these  exist  in  myriads.  Every  important  city 
has  more  than  a  hundred.  Temple  lands  and 
incomes  are  in  most  cases  attached  to  them. 
If  all  these  are  appropriated  to  educational  pur- 
poses, we  guarantee  plenty  of  money  and  means 
to  carry  out  the  plan.  This  could  be  done  very 
well  at  the  present  time.  The  temples  really 
belong  to  the  people  who  contributed  to  their 
establishment.  Buddhism  and  Taoism  are  de- 
caying, and  can  not  long  exist,  whilst  the  West- 


INDIVIDUAL  GOVERNMENT  241 

em  religion  is  flourishing  and  making  progress 
every  day,    Buddliism  is  on  its  last  legs,  and 
Taoism  is  discouraged,  because  its  devils  have 
become  irresponsive  and  inefficacious.    If  there 
be  a  renaissance  of  Confuciansm,  China  will  be 
brought  to  order  and  Buddhism  and  Taoism  will 
receive  secure  protection  from  the  sect  of  the 
learned.    We  suggest  that  seven  temples  with 
their  land,  out  of  every  ten,  be  appropriated  to 
educational  purposes.    The  emperor  can  satisfy 
the  ousted  priests  by  the  bestowal  of  distinc- 
tions and  rewards  upon  themselves,  or  official 
rank  upon  their  relatives.    By  these  means  our 
schools  will  spring  up  by  the  tens  of  thousands, 
and  after  their  utility  has  been  demonstrated 
the  affluent  gentry  will  doubtless  come  forward 
with  subscriptions  for  a  more  extended  educa- 
tional enterprise.'' 

All  the  great  forces  that  have  been  at  work 
in  bringing  about  the  regeneration  of  China  are 
themselves  by-products  of  our  Christian  civili- 
zation, while  the  direct  inspiration  that  led  the 
emperor  to  buy  and  study  all  kinds  of  Western 
books  was  that  which  came  from  his  study  of 
the  Gospel  of  Luke  and  the  New  Testament; 
and  hence  the  present  great  reform  movement 


242     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

in  all  phases  of  Chinese  political,  business,  so- 
cial, educational,  and  religious  life  is  itself  a 
by-product  of  modern  Protestant  missions.  We 
say  Protestant  missions,  for  while  Catholicism 
has  been  working  in  China  for  centuries  past, 
and  had  had  its  influence,  most,  if  not  all,  of 
which  was  for  the  uplift  of  China,  it  was  too 
narrow  in  its  scope  and  vision  ever  to  have 
gotten  the  great  Middle  Kingdom  out  of  the 
ruts  of  the  ages.  It  required  a  vitalizing,  re- 
vivifying influence,  broad  enough  to  take  in  all 
phases  of  life;  and  this  Protestantism  alone 
was  able  to  communicate  to  the  Chinese. 


CHAPTEE  XVII 

PEODUCTS  AND  BY-PEODUCTS 

Jesus  Cheist  thought  in  terms  of  empires  and 
He  talked  in  terms  of  continents  and  worlds, 
and  He  wants  all  of  His  followers  to  do  the 
same.  His  visions  were  world-visions.  He  was 
a  subject  of  no  ruler,  a  citizen  of  no  country. 
He  was  a  citizen  of  the  world,  an  inhabitant  of 
the  universe,  a  subject  only  of  the  King  of  kings. 
Listen  to  some  of  the  last  commands  He 
gave  to  His  disciples ;  commands  that  have  been 
reverberating  among  the  corrugations  of  my 
brain  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  Maybe  I  have 
quoted  them  in  another  chapter.  Maybe  you 
have  read  them  over  again  and  again  to  con- 
vince others  what  the  gospel  ought  to  do  with- 
out being  convinced  yourself  to  the  point  of 
action.  '^Go  and  teach  all  nations.' '  He 
thought  in  terms  of  empires.  '*6o  and  preach 
the  gospel  to  every  creature,"  *Ho  the  uttermost 
part  of  the  earth. ' '  He  talked  in  terms  of  con- 
tinents and  worlds. 

243 


244    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

As  a  young  man  this  came  to  me  as  a  per- 
sonal matter,  and  as  I  read  His  last  prayer  for 
His  disciples  and  ' '  for  all  those  who  should  be- 
lieve'' on  Him  through  their  i3 reaching,  I  heard 
Him  say,  *^As  Thou  hast  sent  Me  into  the 
world,  even  so  (in  exactly  the  same  way)  have 
I  also  sent  them  into  the  world, ' '  and  I  could  not 
understand,  and  I  can  not  yet,  how  anybody  can 
read  that  sentence  without  the  feeling  that  he 
ought  to  have  some  special  share  in  mission 
work.  By  mission  work  I  mean  helping  the  fel- 
low who  has  never  had  a  chance. 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  you  believe  in 
home  missions.  It  may  be  enough  for  you,  but 
that  is  because  you  are  small  There  are  peo- 
ple— little  people,  shriveled  souls — whose  vision 
is  no  larger  than  their  own  village.  There  are 
others  who  can  not  see  beyond  their  own  State, 
and  still  others  who  can  not  see  beyond  their 
own  country;  but  they  are  not  Jesus  Christ's 
kind.  He  could  see  Jerusalem.  He  could  see 
Judea.  He  could  see  Samaria  and  Galilee;  but 
His  vision  reached  also  to  the  uttermost  parts 
of  the  earth.  So  I  insist  that  your  vision  will 
show  how  big  you  are. 

Nor  do  I  mean  that  a  person  is  large  just 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS       245 

because  he  goes  to  a  foreign  land  to  work. 
There  are  little  souls  go  long  distances.  They 
settle  down  in  one  small  hole  and  drill  and 
drill  and  drill.  What  we  want  is  large  men 
with  large  visions,  who  are  ready  to  go,  or  ready 
to  stay  if  their  roots  are  sunk  too  deep  at 
home,  and  send  some  one  else  in  their  place.  It 
is  just  as  important  to  be  willing  to  send  as 
to  go,  and  Jesus  Christ  in  this  age  wants  more 
men  at  the  home  base  who  are  willing  to  pay 
their  representative  on  the  firing-line,  or  raise 
up  a  man  on  the  foreign  field  who  will  go  out 
and  teach,  or  preach  to  his  own  people.  Get 
a  vision.  Then  take  upon  yourself  a  task — a 
task  big  enough  for  you.  A  vision  without  a 
task  will  make  you  a  visionary.  A  task  without 
a  vision  will  make  you  a  drudge.  But  a  task 
with  a  vision  has  a  fair  chance  of  making  you 
a  hero  and  some  one  else  a  man. 

Then,  when  you  have  taken  upon  yourself  a 
task,  be  a  live  wire.  And  remember  that  a  live 
wire  may  be  one  of  two  kinds :  it  may  be  charged 
by  a  dynamo  and  may  carry  light  or  power  to 
a  thousand  neighborhoods,  or  it  may  run  a 
dynamo  and  may  set  the  machinery  of  a  dozen 
mills  in  motion. 


246     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Get  it  on  your  nerves,  and  remember,  as 
some  one  lias  said,  that  you  have  two  sets  of 
nerves:  sensory  nerves  and  motor  nerves. 
There  are  thousands  of  people  all  over  the 
Church  who  have  had  missions  and  a  hundred 
other  good  things  on  their  sensory  nerves  for 
years.  There  were  times  when  they  could  not 
sleep.  There  were  times  when  it  brought  tears 
from  their  eyes.  There  were  times  when  it 
brought  a  throbbing  to  their  heart.  What  they 
want  now  is  to  switch  it  onto  their  motor  nerves. 
Get  it  to  move  your  tongue  to  talk  for  missions, 
and  you  go  into  your  pockets  and  bring  out 
gifts  for  missions.  Let  the  farmer  plant  for 
missions,  and  the  carpenter  build,  and  the 
laborer  labor,  and  the  millionaire  give  of  his 
millions  for  missions.  And  then  let  some  give, 
as  the  Ma,ster  gave,  their  life,  their  blood  for 
the  sake  of  sending  the  gospel  to  the  last  man 
in  '*the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth." 

Before  I  had  finished  my  college  life  this 
thing  got  on  my  sensory  nerves,  and  I  decided 
that  if  I  could  not  go  to  the  foreign  field  I  would 
take  up  a  boy  in  some  mission  school  or  college, 
educate  him,  and  send  him  out  as  my  repre- 
sentative in  the  uttermost  part  of  the  earth. 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      247 

Just  as  I  completed  my  work  in  the  university 
I  got  it  switched  onto  my  motor  nerves  and  I 
was  sent  to  China.  I  did  not  get  it  off  my  sen- 
sory nerves,  however.  I  was  sent  to  *' teach,'' 
and  I  tried  to  put  my  life  and  my  intelligence,  in 
so  far  as  I  could,  into  the  boys  I  taught.  But  I 
could  not  get  away  from  the  thought  that  it 
would  be  gratifying  to  have  a  boy  with  a  Chi- 
nese tongue  and  Chinese  thought  and  a  Chinese 
heart  whom  my  money  had  educated,  and  who 
would  go  forth  and  teach  or  preach  the  gospel 
in  my  stead.  I  could  educate  a  boy  for  thirty 
dollars  a  year ;  and  so  I  found  a  boy,  and  I  got 
Mm  in  this  way. 

My  wife  went  to  China  two  years  before  I 
did.  She  was  a  physician  in  charge  of  the  hos- 
pital of  the  Presbyterian  mission  in  Peking. 
One  day  a  woman,  dying  of  tuberculosis,  en- 
tered her  dispensary,  leading  a  little  six-year- 
old  boy  by  the  hand. 

The  doctor  examined  her  carefully,  but  was 
compelled  to  tell  her  there  was  no  hope ;  medi- 
cine could  not  save  her  life.  Nevertheless,  as 
she  was  a  country  woman,  far  from  her  native 
village,  and  had  about  her  all  the  evidences  of 
poverty,  she  took  her  into  the  dispensary  and 


248    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

assured  her  that  she  would  do  what  she  could 
for  her.  She  told  her  of  the  love  of  the  Master, 
of  the  power  of  the  gospel,  and  that,  while  medi- 
cine could  not  sa,ve  her  life,  Jesus  Christ  could 
save  her  soul. 

There  are  those  who  think  that  one  is  talk- 
ing sentiment  when  he  pretends  to  know  that 
he  is  saved.  But  I  want  to  say  that,  while  I 
believe  in  sentiment  in  its  place,  I  do  not  talk 
sentiment  in  matters  of  this  kind.  I  know  I  am 
saved.  I  faithed  that  matter  out  in  my  con- 
version, just  as  I  solved  my  problems  in  ge- 
ometry while  in  college,  by  reasoning.  Spir- 
itual problems  are  solved  by  faith  just  as  tem- 
poral problems  are  solved  by  reason,  and  after 
their  solution  they  are  just  as  much  a  part  of 
our  definite  knowledge  as  the  products  of  rea- 
son. The  reason  why  there  is  so  much  uncer- 
tainty about  the  results  of  faith  is  that  spiritual 
knowledge  is  of  a  higher  order  and  there  are 
fewer  people  who  have  tried  to  acquire  spiritual 
knowledge  in  a  scientific  and  logical  way. 

This  woman  believed  what  the  doctor  told 
her.  Like  most  of  her  class,  she  was  not  con- 
cerned about  the  scientific  explanation,  the  rea- 
sons, and  the  logical  connections.    She  simply 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      249 

knew  she  was  saved.  She  was  satisfied  that  a 
change  had  come  into  her  Hfe — a  change  which 
banished  the  fear  of  death  and  brought  her  a 
lasting  peace.  She  did  not  understand  it.  She 
did  not  try  to  understand  it.  She  was  satisfied 
with  the  thing  itself,  whatever  it  was.  It  made 
life  easier,  and  it  banished  all  the  horror  of 
death  by  substituting  for  it  a  hope  of  a  life 
to  come. 

But  one  day  the  doctor  came  into  the  hos- 
pital, and  there  sat  the  woman,  with  her  little: 
boy  in  her  arms,  to  whom  she  was  crooning  a 
Chinese  lullaby: 

My  little  baby,  little  boy  blue. 
Is  as  sweet  as  sugar  and  cinnamon  too; 
Is  n*t  this  precious  darling  of  ours. 
Sweeter  than  dates  and  cinnamon  flowers  ? 

and  great  tears  were  rolling  down  her  cheeks. 

''Why,  Mrs.  Tsan,"  exclaimed  the  doctor, 
''what  is  the  matter?    Are  you  afraid  to  dief 

' '  No,  I  am  not  afraid  to  die, ' '  she  answered ; 
"but  when  I  die,  what  is  to  become  of  this  little 
boyr' 

And  sure  enough,  what  was  to  become  of 
that  little  boy?    There  are  no  hospitals,  no  dis- 


^50     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

pensaries,  no  foundling  asylums,  no  orphanages, 
no  places  of  any  kind  to  care  for  the  little  folks 
who  are  left  without  parents.  These  also  are 
by-products  of  the  gospel,  and  the  little  ones 
who  are  left  alone  in  babyhood  and  childhood 
are  like  so  many  puppies  on  the  street.  But 
you,  my  dear  reader,  do  not  know  what  *^  pup- 
pies on  the  street*'  means  unless  you  have  vis- 
ited an  Oriental  city.  One  of  these  little 
motherless  animals  finds  a  bone  or  a  cabbage- 
leaf,  and  a  bigger  dog  attacks  it,  bites  it,  takes 
away  its  bone,  and  it  goes  whining  and  hungry 
away,  until  some  morning  its  little  lifeless  body 
is  found  stretched  out  in  the  gutter  and  it  is 
hauled  away  with  the  refuse. 

It  is  the  same  with  the  little  human  animals. 
I  was  coming  from  church  one  cold,  bright  Sun- 
day morning  in  midwinter.  There  were  a  lot 
of  little  mat  shacks  built  against  the  city  wall 
where  the  beggars  lived.  A  babe  had  been  bom 
in  one  of  these  hovels  during  the  night  or  morn- 
ing; it  was  thrown  out  upon  the  sand,  where  it 
lay  like  a  dead  rat  as  I  came  home  from  church. 
On  another  occasion  I  was  walking  on  top  of 
the  city  wall  with  one  of  the  ladies  of  the  Wom- 
an's Foreign  Missionary  Society.    It  was  just 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      251 

at  dusk.  I  stumbled  upon  something,  and,  look- 
ing to  see  what  it  was,  I  found  a  child's  head, 
the  body  having  been  devoured  by  the  dogs. 
Pardon  me  for  telling  these  gruesome  tales ;  but 
that  is  the  fate  of  maay  of  the  little  dead  chil- 
dren in  a  land  without  a  gospel. 

Every  morning  there  is  a  big  black  cart, 
pulled  by  a  big  black  cow,  comes  down  the  street 
not  two  hundred  yards  from  where  I  have  lived 
for  sixteen  years.  A  man  goes  with  it  and 
gathers  up  the  little  packages  that  are  wrapped 
up  in  floor  matting  and  placed  upon  the  street 
comers.  These  he  puts  in  the  cart,  drags  them 
out  of  the  city,  and  buries  them  all  in  one  hole. 
Such  is  the  fate  of  the  little  dead  children. 
Now,  what  of  the  living  ones? 

Often,  as  I  have  gone  along  the  streets  on 
cold  winter  nights,  I  have  passed  a  large  pot, 
two  feet  or  more  in  diameter,  imbedded  upon 
the  top  of  a  clay  oven.  In  this  pot  the  nut 
dealers  roast  their  chestnuts.  The  clay  of  the 
oven  will  hold  the  heat  a  good  part  of  the  night, 
and  often  as  I  have  returned  from  church  on 
Sunday  night  I  have  seen  two  of  these  little 
ragged  street  urchins  curled  up  head  to  feet, 
clothed  in  rags,  in  this  pot,  the  only  place  they 


252     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

have  to  sleep.  At  such  times  one  can  not  help 
thinking  of  those  who  care  nothing  except  for 
their  own  comfort  and  entertainment,  of  Laza- 
rus and  the  rich  man,  and  of  the  words  of  the 
Master :  ' '  Son,  remember  that  thou  in  thy  life- 
time receivedst  thy  good  things,  and  likewise 
Lazarus  evil  things:  but  now  he  is  comforted, 
and  thou  art  tormented. ' '  And  I  can  not  lielp 
adding:  ^'God  forbid  that  we  should  be  on  the 
rich  man's  side  of  that  fixed  gulf,  whatever  it 
may  be,  when  we  long  for  a  drop  of  water  for 
our  parched  tongue,  because  we  have  appropri- 
ated the  gifts  of  the  gospel  and  forgotten  the 
poor."  And  so  this  poor  woman  said,  **No,  I 
am  not  afraid  to  die;  but  when  I  die,  what  is 
to  become  of  this  little  boyf 

And  the  doctor,  her  woman's  heart  moved 
with  compassion  for  the  mother,  answered: 

'*Mrs.  Tsan,  give  me  your  little  boy.  I  will 
adopt  him  as  my  boy,  and  I  will  take  care  of 
him. ' ' 

And  Mrs.  Tsan  gave  the  little  boy  to  the 
doctor.  Then,  some  six  years  afterward,  I  mar- 
ried the  doctor  and  got  that  boy,  eleven  or 
twelve  years  old,  extra. 

I  never  got  anything  better  in  my  life^ — bet- 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      253 

ter  for  me  and  better  for  the  boy.  And  let  me 
say  light  here  that  a  thing  is  never  better  for 
you  until  you  have  made  it  better  for  some  one 
else,  God  gives  no  gifts  outright.  With  some 
He  deposits  ten  talents,  with  others  five,  with 
others  one;  but  the  time  will  come  when  He 
will  require  an  account. 

I  put  the  boy  in  school.  I  paid  his  expenses. 
I  helped  to  teach  him.  I  watched  his  develop- 
ment. He  was  a  good  boy  and  a  fairly  clever 
boy,  and  I  loved  him.  But  the  year  before  he 
was  about  to  graduate  my  wife  and  I  both  be- 
came anxious  about  him,  as  he  did  about  him- 
self. One  day,  in  his  junior  year,  he  came  to 
me  and  said,  ^^  Father,  I  am  afraid  if  I  remain 
in  school  until  I  graduate  I  will  go  as  my 
mother  went." 

*'Well,  my  boy,"  I  answered,  ''what  do  you 
want  to  dor' 

''I  would  like  to  go  out  into  the  country," 
he  replied,  '^and  get  plenty  of  fresh  air  and 
exercise,  and  help  some  one  else,  and  save  my 
life." 

''"Why,  God  bless  you,  my  boy,  go!"  I  ex- 
claimed, and,  giving  him  some  money,  I  added, 
''I  want  you  to  eat  good  food  and  take  good 


254    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

care  of  yourself,  and  if  you  need  money,  write 
and  tell  me,  and  I  will  send  it  to  you/' 

He  never  wrote  for  another  dollar.  He  went 
into  the  army  and  taught  the  officers  English, 
and  preached  to  them.  What  is  preaching? 
Not  getting  upon  a  rostrum  and  delivering  a 
sermon.  That  is  not  preaching.  Preaching  is 
just  sitting  down  beside  some  one  in  a  railroad 
train,  or  a  trolley  car,  or  in  your  office  or  home, 
or  on  the  side  of  a  well,  and  telling  them  of  the 
water  of  life,  or  the  bread  of  life,  the  gospel 
of  salvation. 

After  he  had  been  in  this  work  for  some  time 
there  was  an  old  official  opened  a  school  in  Yang 
Chou  on  the  Grand  Canal.  He  employed  one 
of  our  graduates  as  principal  of  the  school  and 
i3iy  boy  as  assistant  principal,  and  he  told  them 
they  might  take  their  New  Testaments  and  teach 
them  all  they  cared  to.  If  he  had  not  allowed 
this  they  would  not  have  gone.  Then  there  was 
an  old  viceroy  got  New  Testaments  enough  to 
send  to  every  official  in  his  province,  and  he  told 
them  they  might  put  them  in  their  schools  if 
they  cared  to.  And  while  we  are  taking  the 
New  Testament — the  foundation  of  all  our  civ- 
ilization— out  of  our  public  schools,  these  Chi- 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      ^55 

nese  viceroys  and  officials  are  putting  it  into 
theirs.  And  at  whose  instance  are  we  taking 
it  outi  Because  of  the  objections  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  and  the  Jew!— the  one  a  people  who 
have  lost  their  power  in  every  country  they  have 
ever  dominated,  until  at  present  there  is  not  a 
first-class  power  that  recognizes  Roman  Cathol- 
icism as  a  State  religion;  and  the  other  a  people 
who  have  never  had  a  country  since  they  re- 
jected Jesus  Christ  and  the  New  Testament.  It 
behooves  us  in  the  light  of  this  statement  to 
inquire  what  it  is  that  has  made  us  what  we  are, 
and  then  to  beware  of  taking  the  foundation  out 
from  under  our  government. 

But,  to  return  to  my  work  and  my  boy;  four 
years  ago  I  broke  down.  I  am  often  asked 
what  chair  I  have  in  the  Peking  University.  I 
usually  answer  that  I  do  not  have  a  chair  at 
all.  I  have  a  whole  bench.  I  have  been  teach- 
ing astronomy,  geology,  botany,  zoology,  physi- 
ology, physics,  mental  science,  moral  science, 
and  physical  geography.  That  is  my  regular 
aiet.  But  I  have  taught  them  (or  shall  I  say 
that  the  boys  have  studied  them?)  in  such  a  way 
(that  our  graduates  can  come  to  Columbia,  Syra- 
cuse, Boston,  Michigan,  Minnesota,  Northwest- 


^56    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

em,  and  California  Universities  and  enter  for 
post-graduate  work  without  examinations. 
Moreover,  I  have  taught  them  every  winter  for 
sixteen  years  with  an  ulster  that  reached  to  my 
feet,  arctics  on  my  feet,  gloves  on  my  hands,  and 
a  cap  on  my  head,  to  keep  warm.  You  ask  why? 
I  answer,  because  every  thirty  dollars '  worth  of 
coal  we  bum  to  heat  the  building,  bums  up  the 
education  of  a  boy.  And  you  can  not  live  in  a 
land  without  a  gospel  and  turn  away  boys  anx- 
ious for  an  education — so  anxious  that  they  are 
willing  to  live  on  food  that  costs  only  $1.75  per 
month— and  keep  yourself  comfortable.  God 
help  you,  my  dear  reader,  to  get  this  thing  on 
your  nerves  and  spend  less  upon  your  own  lux- 
uries and  more  on  needy  humanity! 

I  broke  down.  Simply  overwork.  I  took  a 
tropical,  Asiatic  disease  called  sprue,  and  ran 
down  one  pound  a  day  for  twenty-one  days.  I 
said  to  my  physician, 

''Look  here.  Doctor,  I  can't  keep  this  up  in- 
definitely. ' ' 

*'0h,  it  will  stop  after  awhile,"  he  answered. 

It  got  me  down  to  one  hundred  and  fourteen 
pounds,  and  then  it  stopped.  They  put  me  on 
a  milk  diet,  and  kept  me  on  it  for  nine  weeks. 
Then  they  shipped  me  home  for  repairs. 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      257 

As  I  was  going  from  Tientsin  to  Shanghai 
I  was  sea-sick  and  could  not  take  the  milk,  and 
when  I  arrived  at  Shanghai  I  was  so  weak  I 
could  scarcely  move.  When  Dr.  Lowry  and  my 
wife  came  to  take  me  off  the  vessel  I  said  to 
them, 

*'If  you  get  me  to  Seattle  alive  we  will  be 

satisfied. ' ' 

I  never  expected  to  reach  Seattle.  I  felt  like 
a  man  with  one  foot  in  the  grave.  And  I  tell 
you  when  you  get  there  you  think  a  good  deal. 
Then  comes  the  time  when  to  be  saved  is  the 
most  important  thing  in  time  or  in  eternity. 
You  do  not  care  for  dollars.  You  do  not  care 
for  fame.  Nothing  but  the  knowledge  that  if 
you  go  down  into  the  grave  it  is  all  right,  will 
satisfy  you.  And  my  wife  will  testify  that  dur- 
ing those  nine  weeks  I  did  not  have  one  blue 
hour.  I  know  what  it  means  to  be  saved  when 
you  think  you  are  going  to  die. 

They  took  me  over  to  the  hotel,  and  there 
was  a  letter  from  my  boy— the  boy  my  wife  had 
rescued  from  the  street  and  I  had  helped  to 
make  into  a  man.  I  opened  it  with  trembling 
hands;  not  from  fear,  but  from  love.  It  was 
the  last  letter  I  would  get  from  him  before  I 

17 


258    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

left  China;  perliaps  the  last  I  would  ever  get. 
It  was  covered  all  over  with  tear-stains — and 
there  were  more  on  it  before  I  finished  reading 
it.    He  said: 

''My  Dear  Father: 

I  am  sorry  yon  have  broken  down.  I  am 
sorry  yon  have  to  go  home.  I  hope  yon  will 
soon  be  better,  and  I  hope  you  will  soon  be 
able  to  come  back  again. ' ' 

Then  he  wrote  another  paragraph : 

*' But  don't  worry.  It  is  all  right.  Re- 
member I  am  here,  and  I  '11  do  my  best  for 
Jesus  Christ." 

If  there  ever  comes  a  time  when  you  feel  that 
you  have  one  foot  in  the  grave,  and  some  little 
boy  or  girl  whom  you  have  saved  from  poverty 
and  distress  can  write  and  say:  '*Do  n't  worry; 
it  's  all  right.  I  '11  do  my  best  for  Jesus 
Christ,"  there  is  nothing  that  will  come  to  you 
with  more  of  comfort  or  joy.  And  I  said  to  my- 
self: 

''It  's  all  right.  If  I  do  go  down  into  the 
Pacific  Ocean  as  my  grave,  and  up  to  the  throne 
of  God,  I  won't  try  to  apologize  for  what  I  have 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      259 

not  done.    I  '11  just  trust  Jesus  Christ  and  point 
back  to  my  boy.'' 

I  often  think  of  him  as  I  am  thus  kept  away 
from  my  work,  and  always,  as  I  lie  down  to 
sleep  at  night^ — especially  on  Saturday  night — 
for  the  day  begins  in  the  middle  of  the  Pacific 
Ocean ;  and  as  I  lie  down  on  Saturday  night  he 
is  just  getting  up  on  Sunday  morning.  All  night 
while  I  sleep  he  is  teaching  or  preaching  the 
gospel  of  the  Master.  Then,  as  he  lies  down  on 
Sunday  night  I  get  up  on  Sunday  morning ;  and 
while  he  sleeps  I  work.  And  so  for  twenty-four 
hours  each  day  my  boy  and  I  work  for  the  Mas- 
ter; for  there  is  no  night  with  us.  We  do  not 
change  night  to  day,  nor  day  to  night ;  but  by 
being  thus  on  the  opposite  sides  of  the  world 
we  can  do  God's  work  in  two  hemispheres  and 
among  two  peoples,  and  I  have  a  feeling  that, 
though  my  health  may  shut  me  away  from 
China,  I  have  my  representative  there,  who  will 
do  his  best  for  Jesus  Christ. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS 

If  I  were  asked  what  is  the  most  important 
thing  to  be  done  in  the  establishment  of  Chris- 
tianity in  a  non-Christian  land,  I  should  say  the 
establishment  of  Christian  homes.  The  indi- 
vidual is  not  the  unit  of  a  country.  The  family 
is  the  unit.  God,  when  He  undertook  to  people 
a  world,  did  it  by  the  establishment  of  a  home. 
Again,  when  He  undertook  to  save  a  world  from 
a  flood.  He  did  it  by  saving  a  home.  Once  more, 
when  He  wanted  to  raise  up  a  nation  into  whose 
minds  and  hearts  He  could  commit  His  most 
precious  revelation,  He  did  it  by  raising  up  a 
God-fearing  man  and  wife;  for  Sarah  was  as 
important  an  element  as  Abraham  in  the  mak- 
ing of  the  character  of  the  Jewish  people. 
Those  who  desire  to  know  the  difference  between 
a  man  with  a  Christian  wife  and  one  with  a 
heathen  wife  in  a  non-Christian  land  may  study 
the  history  of  Abraham  and  Lot.  Both  of  them 
were  alike  called  faithful ;  but  while  the  record 
of  the  one  is  resplendent  with  honor,  that  of 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      261 

the  other  may  not  be  written.  A  Christian 
home  in  a  non-Christian  community  is  to  the 
ordinary  home  what  an  arc-light  is  to  a  tallow 
dip,  and  is  a  by-prodnct  of  the  gospel  the  same 
as  the  arc-light. 

Mr.  Wang,  a  scholar  from  the  Shantung 
Province,  a  graduate  of  the  first  degree,  was 
in  Peking  attending  the  examinations  for  the 
purpose,  if  possible,  of  securing  his  M.  A.  He 
failed  to  take  his  degree,  and  one  day  while 
walking  down  the  Hatamen  great  street  he 
dropped  into  our  street  chapel  and  sat  down  to 
rest  and,  incidentally,  to  listen  to  the  preaching. 
Something  that  the  preacher  said  caught  his  at- 
tention, caused  him  to  forget  his  failure,  and 
he  became  interested  in  the  gospel  message. 

After  the  meeting  was  over  Mr.  Wang  sat 
still,  and  as  the  missionary,  Mr.  Leander  W. 
Pilcher,  was  leaving  the  church,  he  said  to  Mr. 
Wang,  among  other  things, 

*  ^  I  hope  you  will  be  among  the  saved. ' ' 

''What  does  he  meanT'  asked  Mr.  Wang  of 
Ch'en,  the  gatekeeper,  who  was  then  assisting 
in  chapel  work. 

Before  Mr.  Ch'en  answered  the  question,  the 
following  conversation  took  place: 


262     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

^^What  is  your  honorable  name,  sirT* 

^^My  miserable  name  is  Wang." 

^^  Where  do  you  livef 

^^I  live  in  the  Province  of  Shantung,  the  vil- 
lage of  An  Chia,  near  Tai-an-fu.'' 

^^AVhat  is  your  business,  sir!'' 

^'I  have  no  business  at  present,  but  am  in 
Peking  to  attend  the  examinations." 

^^Are  you  interested  in  Christianity?" 

'^Yes,  I  am  interested  in  it;  but  I  do  not 
understand  it.  What  does  he  mean  by  saying 
he  hopes  I  will  be  among  the  saved?" 

Mr.  Wang — or,  as  he  was  always  called. 
Teacher  Wang,  was  of  a  delicate  constitution, 
with  much  the  appearance  of  one  in  the  later 
stages  of  consumption ;  and  without  directly  an- 
swering his  question,  Mr.  Ch'en  asked, 

*^  Would  you  like  to  know  more  about  this 
doctrine!" 

''Indeed  I  would,"  replied  the  scholar. 

Ch'en  invited  him  to  his  home  to  drink  tea 
and  talk  the  matter  over,  introduced  him  to  Dr. 
Pilcher  and  the  other  missionaries,  engaged  him 
in  conversation,  interested  him  in  the  message 
of  salvation,  and  Mr.  Wang  was  soon  anxious 
like  the  Philippian  jailer  to  learn  the  process 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      268 

by  which  a  man  past  middle  life  might  attain 
that  very  desirable  end. 

Ch'en  offered  him  a  room  in  the  mission  com- 
pound where  he  could  sleep,  conversed  with  him 
as  often  as  possible,  gave  him  a  New  Testament 
and  other  books  to  read,  took  him  to  hear  the 
preaching,  put  him  with  others  in  a  study  class, 
taught  him  how  to  pray  and  what  it  meant  to 
believe,  and  in  a  short  time  Mr.  Wang  was  con- 
verted.   The  mission  offered  him  a  small  salary 
if  he  would  become  their  chapel-keeper  and  give 
his  testimony  in  the  street  chapel  where  he  first 
heard  the  gospel.     Mr.  Wang  consented  to  do 
this  for  a  time;  but  he  soon  felt  that  he  ought 
to  proclaim  his  newly-found  Savior  to  the  mem- 
bers of  his  own  family  and  the  people  of  his 
native  village.     The  mission,  therefore,  gave 
him  a  cart-load  of  Christian  tracts,  a  number 
of  copies  of  the  New  Testament  and  the  Hym- 
nal, and  he  set  out  for  Shantung. 

When  he  arrived  at  home  Mrs.  Wang  asked 
him  to  tell  about  the  trip.  He  did  so.  He  told 
of  the  examination  and  of  his  failure  to  pass; 
of  his  dejected  condition  when  he  went  into  the 
street  chapel;  of  the  interest  shown  in  him  by 
the  boy  Ch'en;  of  the  kindness  of  those  whom 


264    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

he  had  always  been  accustomed  to  think  of  as 
*^ foreign  devils;"  of  the  cleanliness  of  their 
homes,  their  earnestness  in  their  religious  wor- 
ship ;  of  their  schools  for  boys  and  girls,  their 
training-classes  for  men  and  women;  of  their 
hospitals  and  their  care  of  the  sick ;  of  the  clear 
way  in  which  they  seemed  to  understand  the 
problems  of  eternity  and  what  one  must  do  to 
inherit  eternal  life — problems  which  had  always 
puzzled  him. 

That  night,  and  every  morning  and  evening 
thereafter,  he  gathered  his  family  about  him, 
as  Ch'en  had  done  in  Peking,  for  family  wor- 
ship. All  idols  were  banished  from  his  home. 
The  worship  of  his  ancestors,  whose  names  he 
did  not  know  but  for  a  few  generations  back, 
was  given  up,  or  absorbed  in  the  worship  of  the 
great  Father  of  us  all.  He  told  how  they  sang, 
and  how  they  played  musical  instruments  in 
their  worship  at  Peking.  But  he  could  not  sing. 
He  was  too  old  to  learn  to  sing;  but  he  hoped 
his  children  would  some  time  learn.  In  lieu  of 
singing  he  therefore  read  the  hymns;  for  the 
hymn  book  was  almost  as  sacred  to  him  as  the 
Bible. 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      265 

One  day  he  was  reading  the  hynm; 

"Ye  who  seek  the  throne  of  grace 
Do  not  delay"  .  .  . 

''Will  you  kindly  read  that  again!"  said 
Mrs.  Wang. 

Her  husband  did  so.  She  thanked  him,  and 
he  read  the  remainder  of  the  hymn.  She  did  not 
ask  him  to  explain  the  meaning.  She  thought 
she  understood  it.  But  it  was  peculiar.  It  is 
clear  enough  in  English;  but  in  Chinese  ''Pu 
yao  chHh  yen''  may  mean  either  ''Do  not  delay" 
or  ''Do  not  use  tobacco." 

Mrs.  Wang  smoked.  Almost  every  Chinese 
woman  smokes.  I  do  not  see  why  a  woman  has 
not  as  much  right  to  smoke  as  a  man.  I  would 
not  advise  my  lady  readers  to  take  advantage 
of  their  privilege,  but  the  Chinese  accord  the 
same  rights  to  their  women  as  to  their  men  in 
this  matter.    Mr.  Wang  had  said  to  himself, 

"I  will  first  preach  to  my  own  family  and 
my  relatives,  if  I  can  not  induce  them  to  believe 
I  can  not  expect  to  persuade  my  neighbors," 
a  principle  that  is  worthy  of  any  man's  practice. 
What  does  your  wife  and  children  think  of  your 
religion!    They  know  you  better  than  any  one 


266    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

else  does.  Do  they  approve  of  it!  Does  it  ap- 
peal to  tliemi  It  often  happens  that  preachers 
succeed  better  where  they  are  not  known  than 
where  they  are.  They  can  preach  better  than 
they  can  practice.  Mr.  Wang's  life  was  a  model 
for  his  family.  Mrs.  Wang  was  of  the  same 
type.  When  a  thing  was  worth  believing  it  was 
worth  practicing,  and  if  it  was  worthy  of  prac- 
tice it  was  worth  preaching. 

By  a  simple  process  of  reasoning — a  very 
simple  process — Mrs.  Wang,  in  the  light  of  this 
hymn  as  she  understood  it,  or  misunderstood  it, 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  if  she  smoked  she 
could  not  go  to  heaven.  Now,  is  it  not  queer 
that  Mrs.  Wang,  who  had  never  listened  to  any 
of  the  temperance  people  ^^ railing"  on  the  evils 
of  tobacco,  should  without  inquiry  have  ac- 
cepted such  a  conclusion?  She  did,  however; 
and  she  put  away  her  pipe.  As  her  neighbors 
began  to  believe,  through  her  husband's  preach- 
ing, she  told  them  what  the  hymn  book  said 
about  smoking,  and  she  got  them  to  give  up 
their  pipes;  and  they  had  a  bonfire  of  women's 
pipes  in  the  little  village  of  An  Chia — the  first 
temperance  crusade,  so  far  as  I  know,  that  was 
begun  by  the  Christians  in  China.    And  may  I 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      267 

just  liere  remark  that  the  great  temperance 
movement,  as  it  is  being  carried  on  so  success- 
fully in  many  parts  of  the  world,  is  another  of 
the  by-products  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Within  a  month  Mr.  Wang  had  induced  his 
family  to  accept  the  gospel,  together  with  cer- 
tain relatives  and  neighbors,  and  then  he  began 
going  about  the  neighboring  villages  preaching 
and  selling  books. 

One  day  he  said  to  his  son,  a  large,  over- 
grown boy : 

''My  books  will  all  be  sold  before  I  can  get 
another  supply  from  Peking.  You  take  these 
eighteen  names  of  those  who  are  willing  to  join 
the  Church,  go  to  Peking,  and  ask  the  mission- 
aries to  come  down  and  establish  a  church  in 
my  home— and  bring  back  a  wheel-barrow  load 
of  books.'' 

The  boy  did  as  he  was  told.  He  was  him- 
self one  of  the  converts.  He  remained  in  Peking 
for  a  few  weeks  studying  in  the  training-school ; 
and  after  securing  a  promise  from  the  missiona- 
ries that  they  would  visit  his  village  he  took  his 
wheel-barrow  load  of  books  and  returned  home. 
The  missionaries  soon  followed,  baptized  some 
of  the  converts,  established  the  church  in  Mr. 


268    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Wang's  home  after  the  style  of  the  apostles  in 
the  early  days,  and  thus  began  the  building  of 
the  Church  in  the  shadow  of  Tai— the  great 
sacred  mountain  of  the  province. 

Mr.  Wang  preached  for  three  years,  going 
about  all  the  villages  within  a  radius  of  a  score 
of  miles,  often  when  he  was  too  weak  to  do  so. 
To  all  his  wife's  admonitions  his  only  answer 
was: 

'^I  must  work  while  it  is  day.  The  night 
will  soon  come  when  I  can  not  work." 

The  night  did  come,  though  it  was  only  the 
beginning  of  a  long,  long  day  for  Mr.  Wang. 
He  preached  only  as  many  years  as  his  Master, 
but  where  he  preached  there  is  now  a  mission 
station,  a  men's  and  a  women's  hospital,  boys' 
and  girls'  schools,  two  presiding  elders'  dis- 
tricts, with  churches  all  over  that  part  of  the 
province. 

Mrs.  Wang — or  **01d  Mother  Wang,"  as  she 
has  long  been  called — is  probably  the  most  char- 
acteristic woman  that  has  been  developed  by  the 
Church  in  China.  After  the  funeral  of  her  hus- 
band she  called  her  son  Ch'eng-p'ei  to  her  and 
said, 

**I  want  you  to  take  me  to  Peking,  where  I 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      269 

can  study  in  the  training-school  and  take  up 
your  father's  work." 

Her  son  took  her  to  the  capital,  where  he 
studied  in  the  boys '  school,  while  she  entered  the 
training-school,  that  they  both  might  prepare 
themselves  for  the  work  that  the  husband  and 
father  had  laid  down. 

Shortly  after  she  had  begun  her  studies  some 
one  called  her  attention  to  a  Chinese  character 
and  asked  her  what  it  was. 

*^I  do  not  know,'*  she  answered. 

'^Why,  that  is  your  own  name,"  they  ex- 
plained. 

^^And  I  began  to  understand  how  ignorant 
I  was!"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Wang,  as  she  related 
the  incident. 

But  she  set  herself  to  study,  and  it  was  not 
long  until  she  was  able  to  read  the  Gospel  of 
John  with  such  facility  that  she  asked  to  be  sent 
out  as  a  Bible  woman  and  for  a  time  be  allowed 
to  teach  what  she  knew.  This  she  did  for  a  time 
and  then  returned  to  her  studies,  and  after  two 
years  she  expressed  herself  as  ready  to  return 
home  and  take  up  her  husband's  work. 

They  left  Peking,  she  and  her  son,  in  a  Chi- 
nese cart;  but  they  had  not  gone  far  when  the 


270     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

cart  upset,  the  old  woman  became  frightened, 
and  did  not  want  to  get  in  the  cart  again.  The 
boy  dismissed  the  cart,  hired  a  wheel-barrow, 
put  his  mother  on  one  side,  their  bedding  and 
clothing  on  the  other,  and  wheeled  her  four  hun- 
dred miles  to  her  home,  in  order  that  she  might 
take  up  the  work  that  her  husband  had  laid 
down. 

It  takes  heroes  to  perform  that  kind  of  tasks, 
and  it  requires  heroines  to  bear  such  heroes. 
But  both  Mrs.  Wang  and  her  son  Ch'eng-p'ei 
answer  to  that  description  as  the  sequel  to  the 
tale  will  show.    For  forty  years  Mrs.  Wang  pur- 
sued her  labors,  going  about  the  villages  on  a 
wheel-barrow  loaded  with  books,  over  which  a 
great  umbrella  was  spread.    There  were  times 
when  the  people  jeered  at  her  and  told  her  she 
was  crazy.    Her  only  answer  to  such  was, 
*^  You  knew  my  husband,  did  you  not?" 
'*Yes,  I  knew  your  husband.'' 
**He  was  a  scholar,  wasn't  he?" 
'^Yes;  quite  right;  he  was  a  scholar." 
**You  would  not  think  he  was  crazy,  would 
you!" 

**No  one  would  dare  to  think  him  crazy," 
they  admitted. 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      271 

^'Yet  lie  preached  this  same  doctrine  that 
I  am  trying  to  preach, ' '  she  concluded ;  and  this 
usually  ended  the  discussion.  When  *  ^  old  Mother 
Wang'^  Tras  eighty  years  old  she  made  the  trip 
from  Shantung  to  Peking  in  a  cart,  in  spite 
of  her  fear  of  that  vehicle,  in  order  to  ask  Mrs. 
Headland  to  take  her  into  the  palace  to  preach 
to  the  empress  dowager,  ^'because,"  she  said, 
and  her  hands  and  her  voice  trembled,  * '  because 
I  am  so  old  it  seems  to  me  that  there  is  a  prob- 
ability that  the  '  Old  Buddha '  will  be  willing  to 
listen  to  the  gospel  from  my  lips." 

In  spite  of  her  age  and  her  anxiety,  however, 
it  was  impossible  to  get  her  into  the  palace,  as 
no  Chinese  woman  has  ever  been  admitted 
within  the  walls  of  the  sacred  Forbidden  City 
since  the  present  Manchu  dynasty  took  the 
throne,  in  1644,  if  we  except  the  empress  dow- 
ager's painting  teacher,  who  before  she  was  ad- 
mitted was  forced  to  unbind  her  feet,  don  a 
Manchu  garb,  and  dress  her  hair  in  the  fashion 
of  the  court. 

Some  thirty  years  ago  Miss  Clara  Cushman 
went  from  Massachusetts  to  China,  intending 
to  devote  her  life  to  the  uplifting  of  the  Chinese 
woman.    Her  father  and  mother,  however,  were 


^72    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

old,  and  twenty  years  ago  she  was  compelled  to 
return  and  care  for  them  until  they  both  went 
to  their  reward.  The  Woman's  Foreign  Mis- 
sionary Society  then  asked  her  to  return  to 
China.  Before  starting  she  cabled  ^'Old 
Mother  Wang:"  *^ Do  n't  go  to  heaven  till  I 
come.  I  want  to  see  you  again. "  ^ '  Old  Mother 
Wang"  waited,  and  the  next  picture  that  came 
from  the  field  was  the  American  heroine  of  fifty- 
six  sitting  at  the  feet  of  the  old  Chinese  heroine 
of  eighty-four.  Then  Mrs.  Wang  went  peace- 
fully to  heaven. 

Wang  Ch'eng-p'ei  became  our  second  or- 
dained preacher  in  the  North  China  Conference. 
In  1893  he  was  stationed  at  Lan  Chou,  when 
Eev.  J.  H.  Pyke  visited  his  Church  for  the  pur- 
pose of  holding  revival  services.  Dr.  Pyke 
preached  night  after  night  without  being  able  to 
move  the  people.  One  night,  after  he  had  fin- 
ished his  address,  he  asked  for  testimonies,  con- 
fessions, or  prayer.  No  one  moved.  Finally 
Wang  Ch'eng-p'ei's  little  boy  arose  and  said  he 
wanted  to  confess  his  sins.  When  asked  by  the 
leader  what  sins  he  had,  he  said : 

*  *  Yesterday  I  was  playing  with  my  little  sis- 
ter.    She  was  tao  ch'i   (mischievous),  and  I 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      273 

slapped  her.  That  is  my  first  great  sin.  I  have 
another,  also.  Last  week  grandmother  sent  me 
to  the  store.  I  could  not  get  back  before  dark, 
and  I  was  afraid.  I  knew  Jesus  could  protect 
me  in  the  dark  as  well  as  in  the  light,  but  still 
I  was  afraid.     I  did  not  trust  Him.'' 

The  confession  of  this  child  started  a  revival 
service  unlike  any  that  had  ever  been  known  in 
North  China.  Old  men  steeped  in  wickedness 
confessed  their  sins  and  begged  for  forgiveness, 
and  there  was  started  here,  as  a  result  of  the 
confession  of  this  child,  a  revival  that  over- 
spread all  North  China,  going  through  the 
schools,  colleges,  and  theological  seminaries  as 
well  as  the  Churches.  At  this  meeting  the  chil- 
dren became  very  happy,  and  the  next  day,  while 
they  were  playing  in  the  sand,  Dr.  Pyke  heard 
one  of  them  exclaim, 

*  *  Oh,  I  am  just  as  happy  as  though  I  had  a 
double  handful  of  cash!'' 

*  ^  I  am  just  as  happy  as  though  I  had  a  double 
handful  of  silver,"  said  his  little  brother,  as  he 
scooped  up  his  hands  full  of  sand  and  let  it 
run  down  between  his  bare  feet. 

At  the  time  of  the  Boxer  insurrection,  in 
1900,  Wan  Ch'eng-p'ei  was  attending  Confer- 

18 


£74    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

ence  in  Peking.  I  think  I  ought  to^  digress 
enough  just  here  to  give  an  account  of  the  cause 
of  the  Boxer  trouble.  It  was  not  a  by-product 
of  missions,  as  has  so  often  been  supposed,  but 
a  direct  product  of  the  avarice  and  aggressions 
of  the  European  governments. 

In  the  spring  of  1898  there  were  two  Roman 
Catholic  priests  murdered  by  the  Chinese  in 
Shantung.  They  were  German  subjects,  and  as 
the  German  Emperor  had  long  been  anxious  to 
start  the  division  of  China  among  the  powers, 
he  made  this  a  pretext.  He  sent  his  fleet  into 
Chinese  waters  and  ordered  them  to  make  the 
mailed  fist  a  terror  in  the  Orient.  They  did. 
They  compelled  the  Chinese  to  pay  a  heavy  in- 
demnity to  the  families  of  these  two  priests  and 
to  rebuild  the  churches  and  houses  destroyed. 
That  was  all  right.  If  people  take  life  and  de- 
stroy property  they  should  help  to  support  those 
who  are  left,  and  restore  the  property.  And 
that  was  enough.  But  it  was  not  enough  for  the 
German  Emperor.  He  took  the  port  of  Kiao 
Chiao  with  fifty  miles  of  territory  around  it,  and 
compelled  the  Chinese  Government  to  promise 
to  allow  him  to  open  all  the  mines  and  build  all 
the  railroads  within  the  province.    This  made 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      275 

the  governor  (Yii  Hsien)  angry,  and  he  estab- 
lished the  Big  Knife  Society,  of  which  his  own 
son  was  a  member,  determined  ultimately  to 
drive  every  foreigner  out  of  China.  When  we 
remember  that  the  German  minister  was  the 
only  one  massacred,  and  that  his  death  was  de- 
termined upon  long  before  it  was  accomplished 
— for  it  was  published  in  the  New  York  Sun  four 
days  before  it  happened — we  may  rely  upon  it 
that  this  is  the  true  explanation  of  the  Boxer 
movement.  But  Germany  was  not  the  sole 
cause. 

When  Russia  heard  that  Germany  had  taken 
a  port  and  a  ''sphere  of  influence'^  in  the  Prov- 
ince of  Shantung,  she  demanded  and  took  both 
Port  Arthur  and  Dalne,  without  any  cause 
on  the  part  of  the  Chinese  whatever.  England, 
also  without  cause,  took  Wei-hai-wei.  France 
in  the  same  way  took  Kuang-Chou-wan,  and 
Italy  tried  to  take  San-men.  This  all  occurred 
while  the  emperor  was  issuing  his  reform  edicts 
of  1898,  and  this,  and  not  the  missionaries,  was 
the  cause  of  the  Boxer  uprising. 

Wang  Ch'eng-p'ei,  as  we  have  indicated,  was 
attending  Conference  in  Peking  when  the  Boxers 
reached  that  city.    Before  the  Conference  closed, 


276    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

in  spite  of  the  watchfulness  of  the  missionaries 
as  well  as  the  native  Christians,  the  railroad  was 
destroyed,  and  it  was  impossible  for  either  the 
missionaries  from  other  stations  or  the  native 
preachers  from  other  parts  of  the  province  to 
retnm  to  their  homes.  Some  may  condemn 
them  as  shortsighted  and  careless.  To  those 
thus  inclined  let  me  say  that  as  brilliant  a  man 
as  W.  A.  P.  Martin,  who  had  been  in  China  for 
fifty  years  and  was  then  president  and  founder 
of  the  Imperial  Peking  University,  remained  in 
his  own  home  until,  when  he  was  on  his  way  to 
the  British  Legation,  whence  he  was  fleeing  for 
safety,  his  cart  and  mule  were  forcibly  taken 
from  him  by  the  Boxers,  and  he  was  compelled 
to  complete  his  journey  afoot.  And  Sir  Robert 
Hart,  that  marvelous  statesman,  diplomat,  and 
inspector  general  of  the  Imperial  Maritime  Cus- 
toms Service,  who  had  also  been  in  China  for 
half  a  century,  and  had  manipulated  more 
treaties  for  the  Chinese  Government  than  any 
other  person,  when  he  entered  the  British  Le- 
gation and  was  asked  what  of  his  property  he 
had  saved,  answered,  *  *  Only  the  clothes  I  have 
on." 

We  can  not  blame  the  missionaries,  there- 
fore, for  having  been  taken  by  surprise.    Wang 


PRODUCTS  AND  BY-PRODUCTS      ^77 

Ch'eng-p'ei  was  made  the  leader  of  the  Chris- 
tians who  were  organized  into  troops  to  defend 
the  mission  against  the  Boxers.  When  the  mis- 
sionaries were  asked  to  go  to  the  legation,  they 
refused  to  go  unless  they  could  take  the  stu- 
dents of  the  university  and  the  girls'  high 
school,  together  with  such  Christians  as  cared 
to  go  with  them.  This  was  at  first  refused,  but 
in  a  few  moments  thereafter  sanctioned,  and 
they  were  allowed  to  occupy  Prince  Su's  palace 
across  the  canal  from  the  legation.  Here 
Ch'eng-p'ei  was  also  leader  of  the  Christian  de- 
fenders of  the  palace. 

On  one  occasion  the  Boxers  got  close  up  to 
the  walls  of  the  palace  and  attempted  to  kill  the 
prisoners  with  bricks,  stones,  and  clubs,  while 
others  were  on  housetops  not  far  away,  ready 
to  shoot  down  any  one  who  appeared  in  de- 
fense of  the  imprisoned  women  and  girls. 
Ch'eng-p'ei  saw  that  a  sortie  must  be  made, 
and  so  he  called  to  his  companions; 

**Who  will  follow  me  and  help  to  drive  away 
these  Boxers  and  save  our  women  and  chil- 
dren?'' 

* '  You  lead,  and  we  will  follow, ' '  answered  a 
Congregational  Christian  who  was  also  a  leader. 

^'^  *i  good  brother!"  exclaimed  Ch'eng-p'ei, 


278     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

and  with  a  flourisli  of  his  sword  he  rushed  forth 
at  the  head  of  a  band  of  brave  Christian  sol- 
diers. A  Boxer  bullet  struck  him  in  the  chest, 
and  he  fell.  *'Go  on,  my  brothers,  drive  them 
away ! ' '  he  exclaimed.  They  did  so.  Then  they 
carried  Ch'eng-p'ei,  with  other  brave  ones  who 
had  fallen,  over  to  the  British  Legation,  where 
their  wounds  were  as  carefully  dressed  by  the 
physicians  and  they  were  as  tenderly  nursed 
by  the  brave  missionary  girls  and  women  as  the 
foreigners;  but  Ch 'eng-p 'ei *s  life  went  out  in 
a  very  few  hours,  and  his  name  was  added  to 
the  long  list  of  brave  martyrs  who  laid  down 
their  lives  rather  than  give  up  their  faith.  A 
good  product  among  the  many  by-products  of 
missions  in  China. 


CHAPTEE  XIX 

BY-PEODUCTS  IN  EXPLORATION  AND 
DISCOVERY 

When  Jesus  Christ  was  preaching  to  His  dis- 
ciples in  Judea  and  Galilee  the  world  was  a 
mystery.  It  was  unknown  and  unexplored.  It 
had  two  centers  and  two  seats  of  civilization, 
as  indicated  by  their  names :  the  Mediterranean, 
the  center  and  seat  of  the  civilization  of 
Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa ;  and  Chung  Kuo,  the 
** Middle  Country" — China — the  center  and 
seat  of  the  civilization  of  the  Mongol  people  of 
Eastern  Asia.  Between  these,  in  the  real  center 
of  the  undiscovered  world,  lay  India,  to  and 
from  which  the  traffic,  the  trade,  and  the  trav- 
elers of  both  the  other  civilizations  were  con- 
stantly going  and  coming. 

Each  of  these  centers  had  already  estab- 
lished its  educational  and  religious  systems. 
The  eastern  consisted  of  a  kind  of  speculative 
philosophy  dealing  with  man,  things,  law,  gov- 
ernment, morals,  and  life;  while  the  western 

279 


280     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Tindertook  to  discover  man  in  his  relation  to 
God,  sin,  eternity,  and  death.  Each  of  them 
worked  independent  of  the  other — ignorant  even 
of  his  existence.  Confucius  in  China  and  Py- 
thagoras in  Greece  (500  B.  C.)  were  struggling 
with  the  same  problems  at  the  same  time  and 
answering  them  in  the  same  general  way.  Aris- 
totle and  Chuangtzu,  likewise  in  China  and 
Greece,  and  likewise  ignorant  of  each  other,  as 
are  most  of  their  successors,  for  the  name  of 
Chuangtzu,  even  in  the  twentieth  centur}'',  is 
omitt.ed  from  our  encyclopedias,  while  most  of 
my  readers  have  never  heard  his  name,  were 
working  on  the  same  great  problems  with  the 
same  masterly  intellects.  Is  n  't  it  pitiable  that 
a  writer  in  an  encyclopedia  of  the  twentieth 
century  should  be  allowed  to  say, ' '  In  his  eight- 
eenth year  (367  B.  C.)  Aristotle  left  Stagier  a 
for  Athens,  then  the  intellectual  center  of  Greece 
and  of  the  civilized  world/*  when  two  other 
civilizations  of  equal  growth  were  developed  in 
the  adjoining  continent? 

These  three  centers  of  civilization  each  had 
its  own  separate  religions:  China  had  Taoism 
and  Confucianism,  neither  of  which  have  been 
distinctly  missionary  systems;  for  they  have 


EXPLORATION  AND  DISCOVERY     ^81 

made  little  effort  to  propagate  themselves  by 
the  sending  out  of  missionary  representatives 
or  religions  teachers.  India  had  Brahmanism 
and  Buddhism,  the  former  not  missionary, 
while  the  latter  left  its  birthplace  and  propa- 
gated itself  throughout  the  Oriental  world. 
Greece,  Rome,  Scandinavia,  and  indeed  all  of 
Europe,  gave  up  their  native  systems — a  strong 
argument  against  those  who  say  that  a  civilized 
peojjle  will  never  abandon  their  native  religions 
for  an  alien  system — and  adopted  that  of  the 
Jewish  Nazarene. 

In  order  to  get  this  clearly  before  our  minds, 
for  we  want  to  be  honest  in  our  analysis,  let  us 
admit  that  these  three  systems  of  civilization 
developed  three  distinct  lines  of  thinking.  The 
East  was  dominated  by  the  thinking  of  Con- 
fucius, which  was  man's  relation  to  man  in 
human  government,  and  it  has  developed  the 
two  oldest  systems  of  government  the  world  has 
to-day.  While  they  have  a  system  of  worship 
connected  with  it — the  worship  of  ancestors — 
it  is  not  a  religious,  but  only  a  moral  system. 
It  has  developed  a  people  who  have  done  noth- 
ing toward  the  discovery  of  God,  and  little  to- 
ward the  discovery  of  the  world  and  of  things. 


£82    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

The  Hindoo  system  was  dominated  by  Brah- 
manism  and  developed  a  great  religio-socialistic 
system,  the  head  of  which  was  the  priest.  They 
had  their  Menu  to  draw  up  rules  of  government 
just  as  the  Chinese  had  their  Confucius,  and  the 
Greeks  their  Plato ;  but  his  code  of  laws  did  not 
dominate  the  thinking  of  the  Hindoo  people  as 
Confucius  did  that  of  the  Chinese.  The  priest 
took  the  place  in  the  social  system  of  the  Hin- 
doos that  the  government  official  took  in  that 
of  the  Chinese,  and  hence  turned  the  thinking 
of  the  people  to  a  contemplation  of  universal 
laws,  universal  principles — the  universal.  They 
undertook  to  thinJc  out  God,  infinity,  eternity, 
salvation ;  and  they  have  sat  in  mystic  contem- 
plation until  they  have  thought  themselves  out 
to  the  border  of  the  universe  and  have  arrived 
everywhere,  anywhere,  nowhere,  unless  it  be  in 
abstract  infinity  and  universal  nothingness. 
They  did  not  develop  a  government  that  would 
stand  the  test  of  time,  neither  did  they  get  a 
grasp  of  things  that  would  enable  them  to  pro- 
vide for  their  people. 

One  could  almost  imagine  that  the  above  de- 
scription referred  to  the  Jew,  except  for  three 
things :  the  Jew  gave  no  place  to  caste,  no  place 


EXPLORATION  AND  DISCOVERY     283 

to  idols,  and  had  an  infinite  conception  of  the 
value  of  things ;  and  hence  he  kept  fast  hold  of 
his  one  God,  was  left  without  a  government,  but 
with  a  fair  share  of  the  wealth  of  the  world 
within  his  coffers. 

Now  let  us  turn  to  the  European  type  of 
civilization.  As  the  disposition  of  the  Hindoo 
was  to  think  in  terms  of  the  universal,  that  of 
the  European  was  to  think  in  terms  of  the  par- 
ticular. The  former  was  telescopic,  without  the 
ability  to  make  a  telescope ;  the  latter  was  mic- 
roscopic, with  the  ability  to  make  both  a  tele- 
scope and  a  microscope,  but  without  the  dispo- 
sition to  think  in  terms  of  the  universal,  but 
always  anxious  to  divide,  dissect,  analyze,  and 
classify  the  universal  in  terms  of  the  particular. 
Hence  he  was  never  able  to  make  a  religion  that 
was  worth  propagating,  for  religion  deals  with 
the  universal;  but  he  began  to  make  all  kinds 
of  science,  for  science  deals  with  the  particular. 

But  to  make  science  and  discover  and  under- 
stand things  he  must  have  schools.  These  were 
given  him  by  his  priests,  who  were  always  in 
the  beginning  missionaries  from  some  country 
that  had  already  accepted  the  gospel.  Let  us 
admit  that  these  collesres  and  universities  were 


284     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

modeled  after  the  style  of  those  of  Isocrates 
and  Plato  at  Athens  and  the  mnsenms  at  Alex- 
andria; but  ^*the  university,''  we  are  told  by 
the  author  of  that  article  in  '^Chambers's  En- 
cyclopedia," is,  however,  usually  considered  to 
have  originated  in  the  twelfth  or  thirteenth 
centuries,  and  to  have  grown  out  of  the  schools 
which,  prior  to  that  period,  were  attached  to 
most  of  the  cathedrals  and  monasteries,  provid- 
ing the  means  of  education  both  to  churchmen 
and  laymen  and  bringing  together  the  few 
learned  and  scientific  men  who  were  to  be  found 
in  Europe.  Such  an  institute  of  the  higher 
learning  was  at  first  called  studium  or  studium 
generale.  When  a  teacher  of  eminence  ap- 
peared, such  as  Abelard,  or  Peter  Lombard,  or 
Imerius  at  Bologna,  a  concourse  of  admiring 
students  flocked  round  him,  and  the  members  of 
the  studium  generale  formed  themselves,  for 
mutual  support,  into  a  corporation,  on  which 
the  general  name  of  universitas  came  to  be  be- 
stowed. In  this  way  the  oldest  universities 
arose  spontaneously. 

**The  crowds  drawn  from  every  country  of 
Europe  to  Paris,  Bologna,  and  other  educa- 
tional resorts,  had  first  local  immunities  be- 


EXPLORATION  AND  DISCOVERY     285 

stowed  on  them  for  the  encouragement  of  learn- 
ing, and  to  prevent  them  from  removing  else- 
where ;  and  the  academical  societies  thus  formed 
were  by  papal  bulls  and  royal  charters  consti- 
tuted an  integral  part  of  the  Church  and  State. 
*'One  great  difference  existed  between  the 
constitution  of  ,the  two  most  important  univer- 
sities of  early  times.  In  Paris  the  teachers 
alone  constituted  the  corporation;  in  Bologna 
the  university  consisted  of  the  students  or 
scholars,  who  at  first  held  the  supreme  power 
and  appointed  the  academic  officials.  In  this  re- 
spect Bologna  became  the  model  of  the  subse- 
quent universities  of  Italy  and  the  provincial 
universities  of  France,  which  were  corporations 
of  students;  while  the  universities  of  Britain, 
Germany,  Holland,  and  Scandinavia  were  like 
Paris,  corporations  of  teachers,  and  the  Span- 
ish universities  occupied  an  intermediate  po- 
sition. Along  with  a  general  resemblance,  there 
was  much  difference  in  the  constitution  and 
character  of  the  pre-Eeformation  universities, 
the  form  of  each  being  the  result  of  a  combina- 
tion of  various  circumstances  and  ideas  acting 
on  an  originally  spontaneous  convocation  of 
teachers  and  scholars," 


286     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Now,  if  any  one  is  disposed  to  question  the 
origin  of  the  whole  university  system  of  Europe 
and  America,  let  him  look  up  the  history  of  each 
institution.  John  Harvard  was  a  preacher. 
Yale  was  founded  ^' under  the  trusteeship  of 
the  ten  principal  ministers  of  the  colony^' 
of  Connecticut.  Princeton  is  Presbyterian; 
Brown,  Baptist;  Wesleyan,  Methodist;  Am- 
lierst,  Congregational.  But  it  is  useless  to  enu- 
merate the  list.  We  have  given  enough  to  in- 
dicate that  the  Church  sent  the  missionaries, 
the  missionaries  established  monasteries  and 
nunneries,  and  these  in  the  pre-Reformation 
l^eriod  developed  into  the  schools,  colleges, 
and  universities,  until  the  post-Reformation  pe- 
riod, when  the  Churches  began  to  establish  col- 
leges and  universities  and  help  to  build  ujo  a 
Christian  government,  which  opened  State  uni- 
versities and  a  public  school  system ;  so  that  all 
our  educational  regime  is  a  by-product  of  mis- 
sions. 

Now  let  us  go  back  to  the  fifteenth  century 
and  take  a  view  of  the  map  of  the  world.  Asia 
was  a  mystery.  Africa  was  an  unknown  coun- 
try. The  Atlantic  was  the  bugaboo  of  the  world, 
though  Europe,   the  last   of  the  three  conti- 


EXPLORATION  AND  DISCOVERY     287 

nents  to  awake,  was  beginning  to  wonder.  Slie 
wanted  to  know.  She  began  to  dig  in  the  earth 
and  read  the  history  of  past  ages.  She  began 
to  question  the  heavens  and  doubt  the  decisions 
of  Ptolemy.  She  began  to  want  to  see  farther 
out  into  space.  She  began  to  doubt  that  the 
earth  was  flat  and  to  believe  that  it  was  round. 
She  began  to  question  whether  one  would  fall 
off  if  he  got  too  near  the  edge.  She  believed 
that  it  would  be  possible  to  sail  around  the 
world,  and  doubted  that  if  one  went  down 
around  one  side  it  would  be  impossible  to  get 
up  the  other.  Her  thought  was  in  a  ferment. 
She  wanted  to  know.  But  we  call  attention  to 
the  fact  that  it  was  the  people  who  had  been  de- 
veloped by  the  schools  that  had  been  estab- 
lished by  the  Church,  carried  first  by  the  mis- 
sionaries, that  wanted  to  know. 

To  know,  they  must  go.  Bartolommeo  Diaz, 
venturing  farther  upon  the  South  Atlantic  than 
any  others  before  his  time,  finally  rounded  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope,  though  unaware  of  the  fact, 
and  took  possession  of  ports  of  the  coast  of 
Africa  in  the  name  of  his  king,  about  the  year 
1485-6.  In  1497  Vasco  da  Oama,  also  of  Portu- 
gal, fitted  out  a  fleet  of  four  vessels,  manned 


288    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

by  one  hundred  and  sixty  men,  determined  to 
find  a  southern  route  to  India.  Taking  Diaz 
with  him  as  an  under  officer,  they  left  Lisbon 
on  the  8th  of  July,  1497,  and  after  encountering 
fearful  storms,  doubled  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope 
the  i9th  of  November,  and  after  touching  many 
places  on  the  east  coast  of  Africa.,  reached  Cali- 
cut in  India  on  the  20th  of  May,  1498. 

In  the  meantime  Columbus  had  been  brav- 
ing the  storms  of  the  Atlantic  in  an  effort  to 
discover  a  passage  to  India  by  sailing  directly 
west,  instead  of  which  he  made  the  greatest  dis- 
covery the  world  had  reserved,  so  familiar  to 
every  American  school  boy  that  it  is  unneces- 
sary to  record  here  what  happened  in  1492. 
What  Columbus  failed  to  do,  however,  was  re- 
served for  Fernando  de  Magellan,  who  sailed 
on  September  20,  1519,  from  San  Lucar  with 
five  ships  and  two  hundred  and  thirty-six  men, 
struck  the  mouth  of  the  La  Plata,  rounded  the 
coast  of  Patagonia,  discovered  and  sailed 
through  the  Strait  of  Magellan,  and  reached  the 
Philippine  Islands,  where  he  lost  his  life  in  a 
fight  with  the  chief  on  the  26th  of  April,  1521. 
His  companions  continued  their  voyage,  reach- 
ing Spain  on  September  6,  1522,  thus  complet- 


EXPLORATION  AND  DISCOVERY      289 

ing   the    first  voyage   ever   made    around   the 
world. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  follow  Captain 
Drake,  who  lost  his  life  in  his  discovery  of  the 
Sandwich  Islands  as  did  Magellan  in  the  Phil- 
ippines. It  would  be  equally  interesting  to  fol- 
low the  Cabots,  and  Eoss,  and  Cook,  and  Wiley, 
and  hosts  of  other  naval  officers  who  rank 
among  the  explorers,  all  from  countries  devel- 
oped by  the  gospel,  in  vessels  made  by  gospel- 
developed  men,  often  discovering  and  revealing 
to  the  world!  islands  in  the  Pacific  Ocean  with 
missionaries  already  upon  them.  We  do  not 
overlook  the  fact  that  many  of  these  discoveries 
were  made  by  men  who  were  far  more  inter- 
ested in  discovering  a  passage  to  India  for  pur- 
poses of  trade ;  and  hence  the  man  who  is  writ- 
ing the  history  of  the  development  of  trade 
could  reasonably  claim  that  these  discoveries 
are  the  results  of  the  merchants  rather  than  the 
missionaries.  But  a  long  view  of  the  growth 
of  trade  will  reveal  the  fact  that  these  traders 
themselves  are  the  result  of  a  Christian  rather 
than  a  pagan  system  of  civilization,  and  hence, 
in  a  last  analysis,  are  the  result  of  the  work 
of  the  missionaries. 

19 


290     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

My  friend  Oscar  Huddleston,  of  the  Philip- 
pines, a  very  large  and  handsome  man,  with 
a  very  large  suit-case,  and  I  were  compelled 
to  take  a  hack  early  one  morning  at  Summer- 
field,  Kan.,  while  on  laymen's  missionary  work, 
to  catch  a  motor  car  some  seven  miles  distant. 
I  had  two  suit-cases  of  my  own.  There  was  an 
insurance  agent  also  in  the  hack,  and  we  had 
difficulty  in  storing  our  luggage  between  the 
seats. 

^^Pity  that  the  cannibals  hadn't  eaten  all 
the  missionaries,"  the  insurance  agent  re- 
marked. 

^'In  that  case  you  would  have  been  out  of 
business,"  I  answered. 

*'What  do  you  mean?"  he  asked. 

^^Why,  a  world  without  a  gospel  means  a 
world  without  insurance  companies.  Life  and 
property  are  not  protected  where  paganism 
reigns." 

-^Oh!  I  guess  the  white  man  would  have 
developed  insurance  companies,  all  right,"  he 
continued. 

**The  white  man  never  worked  in  that  di- 
rection before  he  got  the  gospel,"  I  answered. 
*^Look  up  the  early  history  of  Europe." 


EXPLORATION  AND  DISCOVERY     291 

^^Well,  I  would  have  run  the  risk,"  he  re- 
plied. 

^^Your  business  is  to  induce  people  not  to 
take  too  much  risk,  isn't  it?"  I  asked. 

'^Sure,"  he  replied. 

' '  Then,  are  you  quite  reasonable  in  this  matr- 
ter?"  I  asked. 

^^Well,  I  'd  run  the  risk  on  the  cannibals 
and  the  missionaries,"  he  replied.  *^I  don't 
believe  much  in  missions,  anyhow." 

'^  Well,  you  do  believe  in  government,  do  n't 
you?" 

^^Yes." 

*^And  in  education  r* 

'^Yes." 

**Aiid  in  trade?" 

*^Yes." 

''Well,  you  just  look  np'^ — and  I  went  on 
to  give  him  the  contents  of  chapters  one,  two, 
and  three  of  this  book,  which  made  him  want 
to  discuss  other  subjects.  But  I  refused  to  let 
him  do  so  until  I  gave  him  this  parting  shot: 

''My  friend,  if  the  missionaries  had  never 
carried  the  gospel  to  your  ancestors  and  mine, 
instead  of  our  riding  in  a  spring  carriage  in 
Kansas,  America  might  have  remained  a  wil- 


292     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

derness  until  this  day,  and  you  and  I  might 
have  been  squatting  on  our  haunches  gnawing 
a  breakfast  bone  after  the  style  of  our  unevan- 
gelized  ancestors  of  Europe. '* 

We  then  talked  of  other  things  until  we 
reached  the  railroad  station;  but  as  we  had 
been  good-natured  throughout  the  discussion, 
he  came  to  me  after  we  entered  the  car,  and  as 
he  sat  down  beside  me  he  said, 

*^Say,  you  are  the  best-fortified  missionary 
I  ever  met." 

*^ Perhaps  your  experience  has  n't  been  very 
extensive. ' ' 

^*Well,"  he  continued,  ^'the  difference  be- 
tween you  and  me  is  that  you  believe  in  inspi- 
ration and  conversion  and  I  do  not." 

^^Then  you  have  not  been  converted  T'  I  re- 
marked, interrogatively. 

^^Not  much,"  he  replied. 

^^Well,  I  have,"  I  answered. 

**You  think  you  have,"  he  continued. 

^'I  know  I  have,"  I  insisted. 

**How  do  you  know  you  havef"  he  asked. 

'*Let  me  explain  in  a  round-about  way,"  I 
answered.  ^*You  will  admit  that  the  brain  is 
the  highest  type  of  physical  creation,  won't 
you?" 


EXPLORATION  AND  DISCOVERY     298 

^^Well,  you  will  also  admit  that  connected 
with  the  brain  in  some  mysterious  way  there 
is  a  thinking  man?" 

^^Yes/' 

'^And  that  reason  is  the  highest  faculty  (or 
state  of  the  mind)  of  this  thinker!" 

*^Yes." 

^^And  that  it  is  this  reason  that  enables  us 
to  solve  a  problem  in  mathematics?" 

*^Yes." 

^  ^  Now,  if  your  reason  was  not  developed,  if 
you  had  not  exercised  your  reason,  you  could 
not  solve  mathematical  problems?" 

**Yes." 

''You  will  admit  also  that  thinking  relates 
us  only  with  things,  won't  you?" 

''Yes." 

"Will  you  admit  also  that  above  thinking 
man  we  have  another  man,  which  we  call  the 
moral  man?" 

"Surely." 

"Well,  will  you  allow  that  that  moral  man 
has  a  conscience?" 

"Most  assuredly." 

"Do  you  think  that  conscience  may  be  de- 


294     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

veloped  by  exercise  or  dwarfed  by  lack  of  ex- 
ercise!" 

^'It  certainly  can.'' 

^^Then  it  is  just  as  much  a  faculty  (or  state 
of  mind)  as  reason,  isn't  it?" 

*'I  hadn't  thought  of  it  in  that  way,"  he 
replied;  ^'but,  yes,  I  '11  admit  it." 

^^Then  it  holds  the  same  relation  to  the 
moral  man  as  reason  does  to  the  thinking  man. 
It  is  the  highest  faculty." 

^'Looking  at  it  that  way,  yes." 

**But  the  moral  man  relates  us  to  our  fel- 
low-men," I  went  on,  ^^  just  as  the  thinking  man 
relates  us  to  things." 

^^So  it  seems." 

^'Now,  will  you  take  another  step  and  ad- 
mit that,  besides  having  a  thinking  department 
and  a  moral  department,  we  also  have  a  re- 
ligious department  to  the  mind!" 

''Some  people  have,"  he  admitted. 

''Do  not  all  peoples!"  I  asked.  "Do  you 
know  of  a  people  without  some  form  of  religion 
or  worship!  I  do  not  mean  a  person,  but  a 
people. ' ' 

**Yes,  all  peoples,  so  far  as  I  know,  have 
some  form  of  religion." 


EXPLORATION  AND  DISCOVERY     295 

**Well,  will  you  admit  that  faith  is  to  the 
religious  man  what  conscience  is  to  the  moral 
man  and  reason  to  the  thinking  man — the  high- 
est state  of  the  religious  mind,  or  the  highest 
faculty  r' 

^'Yes,  I  suppose  so.'' 

^^Then  faith  may  be  developed/' 

^^I  suppose  so." 

**But  faith  links  us  to  God  just  as  reason 
links  us  to  things." 

^^Yes,  I  presume  so." 

'^Then  the  way  to  solve  religious  problems 
is  to  set  faith  to  work  on  them,  just  as  we  solve 
mathematical  problems  by  setting  reason  to 
work  on  them." 

*'So  it  would  seem." 

'^Now,  if  I  had  never  studied  mathematics 
would  you  have  much  respect  for  my  opinions 
on  geometry  or  trigonometry!" 

**Not  much." 

**Well,  that  is  just  how  I  feel  about  your 
opinions  on  religion  and  conversion." 

**Say,  old  man,  you  've  got  me,"  he  ad- 
mitted.   '*I  can't  talk  with  you  on  theology." 

*^Well,  I  think  I  could  pay  you  the  same 
compliment    on   insurance.     And,    frankly,    I 


296     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

would  not  try  to.  I  never  try  to  pose  as  an 
authority  on  a  subject  that  I  do  not  know  much 
about.''  And  I  parted  from  the  man  with  a 
cordial  handshake  on  his  part  as  well  as  mine, 
and  a  bit  wiser,  I  hope,  on  both  missions  and 
religion. 

Let  us  turn,  now,  to  the  exploration  of 
Africa  during  the  nineteenth  century.  From 
the  time  of  Pharaoh  Necho,  about  six  hundred 
years  before  the  Christian  era,  who,  as  Herod- 
otus tells  us,  sent  an  expedition  down  the  Red 
Sea,  with  orders  to  sail  around  what  was  then 
considered  an  island,  and  which  they  succeeded 
in  doing  within  the  space  of  three  years,  until 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  Africa 
was  a  closed  continent.  Something  was  learned 
of  the  shores  both  east  and  west,  but  little  was 
known  of  the  central  plateau. 

'*The  discovery  of  diamond  fields  and  coal 
mines  in  the  Transvaal  Republic,''  says  Bayard 
Taylor,  ''and  of  a  gold  region  to  the  north  of 
Limpopo,  promises  to  change  the  character  of 
the  country  in  a  very  short  time.  Indeed,  these 
new  sources  of  wealth  have  already  given  a 
fresh  importance  to  South  Africa  and  will 
hasten  the  complete  exploration  of  the  regions 


EXPLORATION  AND  DISCOVERY     297 

first  peneitrated  by  Moffat,  Anderson,  and  Liv- 
ingstone. ' ' 

In  a  later  chapter  Bayard  Taylor  goes  on  to 
say:  ^'The  Protestant  missionaries  were  really 
the  first  explorers  of  Sonth  Africa,  and  to  com- 
prehend how  much  those  missionaries  dared,  in 
their  zeal  for  the  conversion  of  the  native  tribes, 
we  must  remember  how  the  hostility  between 
the  Dutch  Boers  and  the  Hottentots,  especially 
the  Namaquas  and  Bushmen,  had  been  con- 
firmed by  generations  of  warfare.  It  was  a 
settled,  chronic  enmity,  and  the  suspicion  which 
it  engendered  could  only  be  overcome  by  slow 
degrees. ' ' 

Mr.  Taylor  goes  on  to  rehearse  in  a  book  of 
three  hundred  and  eleven  pages,  in  the  **  Li- 
brary of  Travel, ' '  the  history  of  the  opening  up 
of  South  Africa,  two  hundred  and  fifty  pages  of 
which  are  culled  from  the  writings  of  these 
three  missionaries  and  their  travels,  and  says: 
**The  patience,  zeal,  and  integrity  of  the  Scotch 
character  was  admirably  adapted  to  this  ardu- 
ous work,  and  in  the  annals  of  missionary  enter- 
prise there  are  no  more  deserving  names  than 
those  of  Campbell,  Moffat,  and  Livingstone." 

In  his  work  on  Central  Africa,  after  review- 


£98     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

ing  the  explorations  of  the  ancients  as  recorded 
by  Herodotus  and  Eretosthenes,  and  the  fur- 
ther explorations  of  the  Portuguese  during  the 
eighteenth  century,  especially  the  Portuguese 
traveler  Lacerda,  he  tells  us  that  *  *  two  German 
missionaries,  Krapp  and  Kebmann,  who  were 
stationed  at  Mombas,  on  the  Zanzibar  coast, 
learned,  through  their  intercourse  with  the  na- 
tives, of  the  existence  of  high  mountains,  cov- 
ered with  snow,  in  the  interior ;  and  in  the  year 
1850  [six  years  before  Captain  Burton,  the  first 
of  the  explorers  of  Central  Africa,  started  on 
his  expedition]  the  former  succeeded  in  pene- 
trating far  enough  to  attain  a  distant  view  of 
the  great  peak  of  Kilimandjaro,  the  height  of 
which  has  since  been  estimated  at  twenty  thou- 
sand feet  above  the  sea.  Although  Dr.  Krapp, 
in  subsequent  journeys,  did  not  reach  the  moun- 
tain range,  he  established  its  existence,  with 
the  fact  that  the  peaks  of  Kilimanjaro  and  Ke- 
nia  rose  above  the  limit  of  perpetual  snow.  He 
also  brought  reports  of  a  large  lake  beyond  the 
mountains,  and  waters  flowing  northward,  which 
he  conjectured  to  be  the  sources  of  the  Nile." 
*^By  glancing  at  the  map  of  the  world  in 
1810,"  says  Dr.  Barton,  **as  printed  in  the  story 


EXPLORATION  AND  DISCOVERY     299 

of  the  American  Board,  we  see  that  when  this 
board  was  organized  all  the  interior  of  Africa 
and  Australia  is  marked  as  unexplored.  It  is 
understood  that  practically  nothing  was  then 
known  with  certainty  about  the  interiors  of 
China  and  Japan. "  It  is  true  that  Marco  Polo 
has  given  us  his  travels  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, but,  though  it  was  these  travels  that  in- 
spired Vasca  da  Gama  and  Columbus  to  under- 
take to  discover  other  easier  passages  to  the 
Indies,  the  story  itself  was  regarded  as  for  the 
most  pa,rt  pure  fiction.  It  was  not  until  the  time 
of  Abbe  Hue — notwithstanding  the  travels  of 
Xavier  and  the  other  fathers  of  the  Roman 
Church — that  a  reliable  record  of  the  interior 
of  China,  Tibet,  and  Mongolia  was  given  to 
Europe. 

Now,  it  would  have  to  be  admitted  by  a 
writer  on  explorations  that  the  discovery  of  the 
world  was  largely  directly  due  to  the  inordinate 
desire  for  wealth  and  trade  on  the  part  of  the 
explorers.  But  when  we  come  to  inquire  who 
these  traders  were  we  find  them  all  coming  from 
the  Christian  countries  of  Europe,  and  we  are 
forced  to  the  conclusion  that  trade  is  a  result 
of  the  intelligence  developed  by  the  schools 


300     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

wliich  were  established  by  the  ChurcK,  and  tbat 
these  explorations  were  but  an  indirect  product 
of  this  same  intelligence. 

But  now  come  to  the  more  direct  testimony, 
and  without  hesitation  we  assert  that  the  his- 
tory of  the  exploration  of  Southern  and  Central 
Africa  can  not  be  written  without  the  credit  be- 
ing given  most  largely  to  Moifat,  Anderson, 
Campbell,  Livingstone,  Krapp,  and  Eebmann. 
When  we  turn  to  China  we  go  at  once  to  Hue 
and  the  other  early  Jesuit  and  Lazarist  fathers, 
while  for  a  detailed  study  of  the  empire  we  must 
go  to  the  records  and  reports  of  the  various 
mission  stations  that  are  scattered  throughout 
the  country. 


CHAPTER  XX 

BY-PRODUCTS  IN  LANGUAGE  AND 
LITERATURE 

At  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  lit- 
tle effort  had  been  made  to  reduce  the  lan- 
guages of  the  less-favored  peoples  to  writing, 
and  of  course  nothing  had  been  done  toward 
giving  them  a  literature.  The  business  of  the 
missionary  was  to  preach  the  gospel,  but  this 
he  could  not  do  until  he  had  first  learned  their 
language  or  taught  them  his  own.  Merchants, 
travelers,  and  explorers  had  sometimes  pre- 
ceded him,  but  they  were  interested,  for  the 
most  part,  only  in  learning  enough  of  the  lan- 
guage of  the  natives  to  serve  the  purposes  of 
travel  or  trade,  and  one  of  the  most  interesting 
productions  of  trade  throughout  the  world  is 
the  jargon  that  has  been  produced  by  the  com- 
bination of  the  languages  of  the  traders. 

At  the  head  of  all  these  jargons  stands  ''pid- 
gin English, ' '  the  combination  of  the  two  great- 
est business  languages  of  the  world,  for  I  think 
it  will  be  readily  admitted  that  there  are  no  two 

301 


302     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

peoples  in  the  world  who  can  surpass  the  Eng- 
lishman and  the  Chinese  as  traders.  What  hap- 
pened, now,  when  they  came  together?  The 
Englishman  could  not  talk  Chinese,  nor  could 
the  Chinese  speak  English,  and  they  were  both 
too  anxious  to  barter  and  earn  to  take  time  to 
translate  and  learn.  Am  I  saying  too  much  also 
when  I  add  that  in  most  cases  they  were  not 
of  such  caliber  that  the  making  of  a  grammar 
or  a  dictionary  was  an  easy  matter!  They 
were  there  to  make  money,  and  not  to  make 
books. 

As  the  Englishman  was  the  stronger  of  the 
two,  had  ferreted  out  the  paths  of  the  sea,  and 
come  a  long  distance,  he  compelled  the  China- 
man to  take  the  heavy  end  of  the  job,  as  all  su- 
perior men  do,  making  him  learn  the  English 
words,  while  he  consented  to  speak  them  after 
the  Chinese  idiom.  For  that  is  what  ^'pidgin 
English''  is — English  spoken  according  to  the 
Chinese  idiom,  for  business  (pidgin)  purposes ; 
and,  as  Dr.  Barton  has  well  said,  ^^  ^Pidgin  Eng- 
lish' seems  quite  good  enough  for  their  uses, 
and  in  fact  is  one  of  the  mercantile  contribu- 
tions to  the  philological  museum  of  the  world." 
Nor  will  the  Chinese  accustomed  to  this  jargon 


LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE        303 

tmderstand  a  word  you  say  so  long  as  you  falk 
good  English. 

I  remember  on  my  way  to  China,  at  the  hotel 
at  which  we  were  stopping,  one  of  the  ladies 
wanted  to  give  her  children  a  bath  before  put- 
ting them  to  bed.  She  called  the  ^^boy,"  as 
all  servants  are  called  in  China,  no  matter  how 
old  they  may  be,  and  said  to  him, 

^ '  Get  me  some  hot  water,  I  want  to  give  the 
children  a  bath." 

The  boy  looked  dazed,  but  did  not  go. 

The  lady  repeated  her  order  in  a  bit  higher 
tone. 

The  ''boy"  looked  about  him  with  an  anx- 
ious, if  not  frightened,  look,  for  he  might  lose 
his  place  if  he  could  not  understand  his  orders, 
but  did  not  move. 

Again  the  lady  gave  her  order,  with  perhaps 
just  the  least  little  bit  of  petulance ;  but  the  boy 
did  not  move. 

Just  then  her  husband,  who  was  a  suave  and 
quiet  gentleman,  and  who  had  traveled  in  all 
countries  and  could  make  himself  understood 
in  all  languages,  entered  the  room. 

''Papa,"  said  his  wife,  "I  never  saw  such 
a  stupid  *boy'  as  this  one  is.    I  have  told  him 


304     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

again  and  again  to  get  me  some  hot  water,  so 
that  I  can  give  the  children  a  bath;  but  he 
doesn't  seem  to  understand  a  word  I  say." 

The  husband  turned  quietly  to  the  boy  and 
said  in  an  even  tone, 

' '  Catchee  one  piecee  bath,  chop,  chop ; ' '  and 
the  ^'boy''  went  off  like  a  shot  from  a  gun. 

But  the  Chinaman  does  not  have  a  high  re- 
gard for  the  man  who  talks  ''pidgin  English'' 
to  him. 

For  years  the  East  India  and  other  com- 
panies had  been  trading  with  China,  but  it  was 
not  until  Eobert  Morrison  went  out,  in  1807, 
that  a  dictionary  of  the  Chinese  language  was 
made  that  they  could  use.  When  Dr.  Morrison 
found  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  enter  China 
he  became  the  translator  for  the  East  India 
Company,  in  whose  employ  he  remained  for 
many  years,  putting  both  the  Old  and  the  New 
Testament  into  Chinese. 

But  Dr.  Morrison's  work  was  only  a  begin- 
ning, and  the  world  is  inclined  to  overestimate 
the  work  of  these  beginners,  as  compared  with 
their  successors,  because  of  the  interest  that  al- 
ways attaches  to  first  things.  Dr.  S.  Wells  Wil- 
liams made  a  very  much  better  dictionary  and 


LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE       305 

prepared  a  book,  ''The  Middle  Kingdom," 
which  has  revealed  China  to  the  English-speak- 
ing peoples,  while  Dr.  James  Legge  performed 
the  herculean  task  of  putting  all  the  Chinese 
classics  into  English,  thus  giving  us,  in  our  own 
language,  the  best  products  of  all  Chinese  lit- 
erary work.  These,  with  the  works  of  Chal- 
mers, Edkins,  Martin,  Smith,  and  other  mission- 
aries, have  given  us  a  reasonably  clear  idea  of 
the  philological,  sociological,  political,  and  lit- 
erary character  of  the  Chinese  people.  While 
for  studying  the  language,  it  will  be  admitted 
that  Mateer  has  given  us  the  best  of  all  helps. 

''How  much  the  world  owes  to  the  philo- 
logical achievements  of  the  missionaries, ' '  says 
Dr.  Barton,  "could  hardly  be  recorded  in  a 
single  volume,  even  of  large  proportions.  They 
have  made  a  far  greater  contribution  to  this 
subject  than  all  other  students  of  language 
combined. 

"Commissioner  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston,  of 
British  Central  Africa,  emphasizes  the  huge 
debt  that  philologists  owe  to  the  labors  of  mis- 
sionaries in  Africa.  He  reports  that  nearly  two 
hundred  African  languages  and  dialects  have 
been  illustrated  by  grammars,  dictionaries,  vo- 

20 


S06    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

cabularies,  and  Bible  translations ;  that  many  of 
these  tongues  were  on  the  point  of  extinction, 
and  some  have  since  become  extinct;  and  that 
we  owe  all  the  knowledge  we  have  of  them  to 
the  intervention  of  the  missionaries. 

*  ^  When  we  turn  to  the  Pacific  Islands  we  find 
that  our  knowledge  of  the  many  languages 
spoken  there  is  due  almost,  if  not  wholly,  to 
the  missionaries.  As  we  go  over  the  groups, 
the  Sandwich  Islands,  Ponape,  the  Mortlocks, 
the  Marshall  and  Gilbert  Islands,  as  well  as  the 
more  remote,  the  Fiji,  the  New  Hebrides,  and 
the  Solomon  Islands,  we  can  not  but  be  im- 
pressed with  the  value  of  the  missionaries' 
contribution  to  the  world's  knowledge  by  their 
discovery  of  the  languages  spoken  by  these 
peoples  and  the  embodying  of  the  same  in  an 
orderly  literature.  It  seems  but  yesterday  that 
Dr.  Hiram  Bingham  was  with  us,  who,  together 
with  Mrs.  Bingham,  gave  to  the  Gilbert  Island- 
ers their  own  tongue,  with  a  grammar  and  dic- 
tionary, embodying  it  in  hymns,  a  New  Testa- 
ment, a  Bible  dictionary,  and  other  books. 

**  Starting  with  William  Carey  in  India,  who 
is  credited  with  translating  the  Bible  in  whole 
or  in  part  into  twenty-four  Indian  languages 


LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE       307 

and  dialects,  until  the  present  time,  the  mission- 
aries have  been  searching  ont  the  unknown 
tongues  spoken  by  that  great  polyglot  people  in 
order  to  put  them  in  permanent  form  as  the 
channel  through  which  Christian  ti*uth  may  be 
conveyed. 

*^In  a  word,  wherever  missionaries  have 
gone  they  have  been  students  of  the  vernacular 
before  they  were  preachers  of  the  gospel;  and 
they  have  been  architects  of  grammars,  vocabu- 
laries, and  lexicons,  and  creators  of  a  Christian 
literature  in  the  form  of  Bible  translations  be- 
fore they  erected  churches. 

^^If  missionaries  had  not  done  this  work, 
who  would  have  undertaken  it?  It  could  not 
have  been  expected  that  independent  students 
of  philology  would  have  been  content  to  bury 
themselves  for  a  lifetime  in  the  center  of  Africa 
or  upon  an  island  in  the  midst  of  the  Pacific 
or  in  the  interior  of  China.,  simply  for  the  pur- 
pose of  giving  to  the  world  a  correct  knowledge 
of  the  vernacular  spoken  by  the  people  in  those 
different  regions.  The  sacrifice  demanded 
would  have  been  too  great  for  the  promised  re- 
ward. No  one  would  expect  that  the  merchants 
who  touched  but  the  fringes  of  the  great  East- 


308    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

em  countries  would  give  much  attention  to  the 
niceties  of  the  language  of  the  people  with 
whom  they  traded.  ^Pidgin  English'  seems 
quite  good  enough  for  their  uses,  and  in  fact  is 
one  of  the  mercantile  contributions  to  the  philo- 
logical museum  of  the  world. 

''It  is  only  the  missionaries,  as  a  class,  who 
have  had  a  motive  strong  and  permanent 
enough  to  carry  men  and  women  of  the  highest 
intelligence  and  training  into  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  earth  and  there  hold  them  at  the 
task  of  language  study  until  it  eventuated  in  an 
extensive  and  orderly  literature. 

' '  Over  four  hundred  effective  and  living  ver- 
sions of  the  Bible,  translated  for  the  most  part 
by  missionaries  and  native  co-workers  trained 
by  them,  are  now  in  use.  These  have  stood  the 
test  of  scientific  scrutiny  and  are  the  crowning 
proof  of  the  thoroughness  with  which  the  chief 
languages  of  Africa  and  the  East  have  been 
mastered  by  the  missionaries. 

*'It  is  not  claimed  that  the  missionaries  have 
done  extensive  work  in  comparative  philology. 
Their  task  has  been  to  make  themselves  masters 
of  one,  two,  or,  as  in  the  case  of  Dr.  Elias  Riggs, 
of  Turkey,  of  several  languages,  not  for  the 


LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE       309 

purpose  of  comparing  one  with  another,  but 
solely  for  the  purpose  of  coming  into  the  closest 
relations  with  those  to  whom  the  conquered  lan- 
guage was  a  household  tongue.  Philologists  of 
the  West  have  made  the  accurate  preliminary 
work  of  these  pioneers  the  field  for  their  own 
investigations  and  comparisons. 

'^The  literary  work  of  the  missionaries  has 
introduced  into  all  of  these  countries  the  mod- 
ern art  of  printing  and  has  built  up  extensive 
printing  establishments  in  all  the  Eastern  cen- 
ters of  population  which  are  producing  millions 
of  pages  annually  of  vernacular  literature. 
This  includes  not  only  the  Bible  in  whole  or  in 
part,  but  all  kinds  of  educational  books,  besides 
translations  and  original  productions,  religious, 
scientific,  and  literary,  for  the  general  enlight- 
enment of  all  classes. 

'^This  work  has  now  made  such  progress 
that  many  presses  which  began  under  the  direc- 
tion of  missionaries  and  were  aided  with  funds 
from  the  missionary  societies  are  now  owned 
and  conducted  by  native  firms.  Much  of  the 
publication  work  of  the  missionaries  themselves 
in  some  countries,  like  Japan  and  India,  is  now 
done  entirely  by  native  companies. 


310     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

''But  we  have  digressed  from  philological 
contributions  to  literary  output,  which  is  never- 
theless a  part  of  the  same  subject.  It  is  through 
this  extensive  output  that  comparative  philol- 
ogy is  kept  up  to  date  and  that  the  rapid 
changes  taking  place  in  so  many  of  the  Eastern 
languages  are  traced.  This  study  is  materially 
aided  by  the  great  number  of  vernacular  peri- 
odicals published  upon  mission  presses  and 
forced  to  keep  up  with  the  modern  linguistic 
trend  in  order  to  command  the  attention  of  their 
clientele.  Educated  native  scholars  are  now 
carr^dng  on  this  work. 

''The  missionaries  are  following  closely,  as 
are  the  native  scholars,  the  linguistic  changes 
that  are  taking  place  in  languages  spoken  by 
peoples  that  are  making  rapid  progress  in  gen- 
eral education,  like  the  Bulgarian,  the  Arme- 
nian, and  Turkish,  some  of  the  languages  of 
India,  the  Chinese,  and  the  Japanese.  It  is  the 
business  of  the  missionary  to  keep  close  watch 
of  all  literary  changes  in  order  that  he  may  put 
his  message  into  such  form  that  it  will  command 
respectful  hearing. 

"  If  it  were  possible  to  bring  together  in  one 
place  samples  of  all  the  granunars,  dictionaries, 


LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE       311 

hymn  books,  Bibles,  school  books,  and  works  of 
general  literature  of  every  kind  and  from  all 
parts  of  the  world  which  have  been  written  or 
translated  during  the  last  century  by  missiona- 
ries or  under  their  supervision,  it  would  make 
one  of  the  most  complete  exhibits  of  the  lan- 
guages and  dialects  spoken  by  more  than  five- 
sixths  of  the  people  of  the  world  that  could  be 
produced.  On  the  other  hand,  if  there  could  be 
collected  all  that  has  been  done  in  this  direction 
by  others  than  missionaries,  or  by  those  work- 
ing with  them,  we  would  find  but  a  meager  ex- 
hibit; showing  conclusively  how  indebted  we 
have  been  and  yet  are  to  the  missionaries  for 
their  persistent,  scholarly,  and  accurate  endeav- 
ors along  philological  and  literary  lines.  While 
the  work  in  this  respect  has  been  unquestionably 
missionary,  it  has  at  the  same  time  been  highly 
scientific;  and  while  it  has  contributed  directly 
to  the  success  of  missionary  work,  it  has  added 
enormously  to  the  philological  knowledge  of  the 
world. 

*  *  The  results  of  this  labor  are  now  available 
for  the  Church  to  employ  in  reaching  the  intel- 
lects as  well  as  the  hearts  of  the  people  of  the 
East.'' 


CHAPTER  XXI 

BY-PRODUCTS  IN  NON-CHRISTIAN 
SYSTEMS 

While  giving  a  series  of  lectures  recently  at 
the  Boston  University  on  '  *  Tlie  By-Products  of 
Missions/'  Sir  Wilfred  Grenfel  was  delivering 
a  similar  series  at  Harvard  on  '  ^  The  Adventure 
of  Life. ' '  I  afterwards  met  him,  and  in  talking 
over  the  matter  he  asked  me  what  I  meant  by 
the  ''by-products  of  missions."  I  called  his 
attention  in  a  brief  way  to  the  contents  of  the 
foregoing  chapters,  when  he  exclaimed: 

''Why,  yes ;  I  had  never  thought  of  it  in  that 
way  before.  The  fact  is  that  all  our  civilization 
and  progress,  traced  back  to  a  last  analysis,  is 
the  result  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  as  car- 
ried by  the  missionaries!"  I  wonder  if  there 
is  any  one  who  would  feel  disposed  to  deny  that 
statement. 

For  some  time  I  had  been  thinking  of  the 
changes  that  had  been  brought  about  in  the  non- 
Christian  religious  systems  by  the  influence  of 

312 


NON-CHRISTIAN  SYSTEMS  313 

the  gospel,  and  while  attending  the  **  Orient  in 
Providence"  I  had  an  opportunity  to  talk  the 
matter  over  with  an  eminent  Japanese  pro- 
fessor. 

''What  influence,  if  any,"  I  asked  him,  ^*is 
Christianity  having  on  the  native  religions  of 
Japan!" 

**It  is  changing  them  entirely,"  he  an- 
swered. 

* '  Can  you  point  out  any  definite  changes  that 
are  being  brought  about?"  I  inquired  further; 
''for  there  are  a  great  many  people  who  are 
ready  to  make  assertions,  but  the  world  wants 
definite  facts." 

*'Well,"  he  answered,  "take,  for  instance, 
the  Young  Men's  Buddhist  Association.  This 
has  been  established  since  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  went  to  Japan,  and  is 
modeled  after  the  same  pattern.  It  gives  lec- 
tures, holds  study  classes,  has  a  gymnasium  and 
reading-rooms,  as  well  as  methods  for  enter- 
taining the  young  men  after  the  style  of  its 
Christian  prototype.  It  never  had  anything 
of  that  kind  before,  indeed  Buddhism  never 
thought  of  making  any  effort  for  the  saving  of 
the  young  men  by  gathering  them  off  the  street 


314     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

until  it  learned  it  from  the  Young  Men 's  Chris- 
tian Association.'* 

^  *  That  is  an  important  change, ' '  I  admitted. 
**You  are  sure  that  it  is  the  result  of  the  sug- 
gestion and  influence  of  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Association?'' 

^^ Where  else  could  it  have  come  from?"  he 
asked.  ^ '  No  Buddhist  would  deny  that  they 
developed  it  as  a  result  of  seeing  the  work  of 
the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association.  But 
that  is  not  the  only  change,"  he  continued, 
*Hhat  has  come  to  Japanese  Buddhism  as  a 
result  of  Christian  influence  and  Christian  ex- 
ample. ' ' 

**Ah,  indeed!"  I  exclaimed. 

*^  Before  the  opening  of  Christian  schools 
the  Buddhists  never  thought  of  opening  schools 
for  the  instruction  of  the  children  of  their  fol- 
lowers." 

*  *  And  have  they  schools  now  that  correspond 
to  our  Church  schools?"  I  inquired;  for  this 
was  a  suggestion  of  change  which  I  had  never 
thought  of  before. 

*^They  not  only  have  schools  for  men,"  he 
answered,  *^but  schools  for  women  and  girls 
as  well ;  and  these  schools  are  modeled  after  the 


NON-CHRISTIAN  SYSTEMS  315 

style  of  our  own.  They  teach  the  leading  tenets 
of  Buddhism  outside  of  the  regular  course  of 
study,  just  as  our  schools  aim  to  instil  into  the 
minds  of  the  children  the  great  principles  of 
the  gospel.  Indeed,  I  regard  that  as  one  of 
the  greatest  social  influences  that  the  gospel 
has  had  in  Japan.  It  is  an  effort  on  the  part 
of  the  Buddhists  to  put  the  new  wine  of  the 
gospel  into  the  old  skins  of  Buddhism.'' 

To  me  this  was  very  interesting,  more  so, 
perhaps,  because  I  had  been  thinking  so  long 
upon  this  subject;  but  I  do  not  see  how  it  can 
fail  to  interest  any  one  as  a  sidelight  in  the  illu- 
mination of  the  world. 

*'And  are  there  any  other  results  of  this 
character  r'  I  inquired. 

' '  Many  of  them, ' '  he  answered.  * '  The  Bud- 
dhists are  now  publishing  newspapers  and  mag- 
azines similar  to  those  of  the  Church  in  Amer- 
ica, and  these  are  having  a  large  influence  upon 
the  people — a  wider  influence,  though  not  per- 
haps as  deep  and  lasting  as  that  of  the  schools. 
It  is  simply  an  adoption  of  Christian  educa- 
tional methods  to  keep  their  people  with  them. 
These  newspapers  and  magazines  are  not  of  a 
bad  tjrpe  and  are  doing  a  good  deal  toward  the 


316     SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

enlightenment  of  the  people.  They  furnish 
them  with  something  to  read,  and  bind  them 
together  into  a  kind  of  a  social  community. ' ' 

^^I  was  not  aware,''  I  said,  ^Hhat  the  Bud- 
dhists had  gone  so  far  in  adopting  our  methods. 
Perhaps  they  have  taken  others?" 

^^ Indeed  they  have,"  he  answered.  *'They 
now  have  Sunday  schools  similar  to  our  own, 
in  which  they  sing  hymns  and  play  on  organs 
not  very  unlike  those  which  we  use  in  our 
churches.  They  have  established  orphanages, 
in  which  they  rescue  children  and  care  for  them 
much  as  we  do  in  ours.  They  have  hospitals, 
where  they  care  for  the  sick  and  thus  win  for 
themselves  a  large  number  of  adherents  that 
they  could  get  in  no  other  way.  They  have  even 
established  women's  societies,  which  are  under- 
taking to  do  for  the  women  of  Japan  what  our 
own  women 's  societies  are  doing  for  the  women 
of  Christian  lands." 

From  what  my  Japanese  friend  told  me  it 
will  be  seen  that  Buddhism  in  Japan,  if  not  in 
other  countries,  has  been  materially  altered  by 
its  contact  with  Christianity.  Has  the  reverse 
been  true  ?  ^Vho  can  tell  of  anything  that  Chris- 
tianity has  adopted  from  Buddhism?    Is  there 


NON-CHRISTIAN  SYSTEMS  317 

not  some  significance  in  this  for  those  esoteric 
Buddhists  who  have  never  seen  Buddhism  in 
the  countries  where  it  has  had  its  opportunity 
for  centuries? 

^  ^  And  may  I  ask, ' '  I  went  on,  *  ^  if  there  have 
been  changes  in  the  customs  of  the  Shintoists 
similar  to  those  you  have  just  described  in  Bud- 
dhism f 

^^I  have  not  tried  to  tell  of  all  the  changes 
in  Buddhism,'*  he  answered,  ^^ because  those 
which  have  come  to  one  religion  have  come  also 
to  the  other,  and  what  I  shall  now  speak  of  as 
peculiar  to  Shintoism  might  just  as  well  have 
been  described  in  connection  with  Buddhism. 
In  Japan  we  have  had  our  national  shortcom- 
ings, peculiar  to  all  non-Christian  peoples. 
Some  of  these  are  connected  with  our  marriage, 
and  others  with  our  funeral  ceremonies.  In- 
deed, under  the  old  regime  the  ceremonies  con- 
nected with  both  marriage  and  death  were 
either  very  loose  or  very  uncertain.  Some  men 
would  take  a  wife  with  but  very  little  ceremony, 
and  get  rid  of  her  with  even  less.  One  of  the 
strict  rules  of  the  Church  was  that  a  man  should 
take  but  one  wife;  she  should  be  given  to  him 
at  the  altar,  and  except  in  an  extreme  case, 


318    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

lie  might  not  put  her  away.  This  appealed  to 
the  better  element  of  the  Japanese,  and  it  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  the  faithful  Buddhists  and 
Shintoists  were  among  these  better  people." 

**And  so  they  adopted  the  marriage  cere- 
mony, did  theyT'  I  inquired. 

**They  did,"  he  replied.  *'It  is  not  uncom- 
mon at  the  great  Shinto  temple,  Hibiya  Dai 
Jingu,  in  Tokyo,  to  see  marriages  being  sol- 
emnized, and  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  the 
priests  will  never  perform  a  marriage  cere- 
mony at  this  temple  for  less  than  fifteen  yen, 
so  that  they  are  making  it  a  source  of  income 
for  the  temple." 

'*And  do  they  take  part  in  funeral  ceremo- 
nies as  well?"  I  asked;  for  he  had  spoken  of 
both  marriages  and  funerals. 

**  Before  the  coming  of  Christianity  to  Ja- 
pan," he  answered,  *^  neither  the  Buddhists  nor 
the  Shintoists  would  have  anything  to  do  with 
funerals  or  marriages.  But  they  soon  found 
that  these  were  the  two  occasions  when  the 
heart  was  most  susceptible  to  influence,  and 
when  people  were  most  in  need  of  sympathy  and 
comfort.  And  taking  their  cue  from  the  Chris- 
tians, they  conduct  the  funeral  ceremonies  of 


NON-CHRISTIAN  SYSTEMS  319 

their  dead  just  as  they  take  part  in  the  wed- 
dings, bnt  they  will  not  officiate  at  a  funeral  any 
more  than  at  a  wedding  without  remuneration. 
They  charge  for  conducting  a  funeral  according 
to  the  number  of  priests  they  furnish,  and,  of 
course,  according  to  the  length  of  the  family's 
purse  or  their  reputation  for  wealth  in  the  com- 
munity." 

In  China,  so  far  as  I  have  seen,  little  if  any 
influence  has  been  brought  to  bear  upon  Bud- 
dhism that  has  effected  any  change.  China  is 
a  large  place;  the  people  are  a  great  people, 
firmly  bound  to  their  customs,  and  it  is  not 
likely  that  these  religious  changes  will  appear 
at  an  early  date  among  them. 

The  same  can  not  be  said  of  India.  I  was 
talking  with  a  noted  Hindoo  professor,  who 
was  a  delegate  to  some  religious  meeting  in 
America  not  long  since,  and  I  put  the  same 
question  to  him  that  I  did  to  my  Japanese 
friend. 

^^What  changes,  if  any,  have  been  brought 
about  in  Hindooism  by  the  influence  of  the  gos- 
pel!" 

** Among  the  greatest  changes,"  he  an- 
swered, '^outside  of  the  regular  preaching  to 


320    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

the  people,  are  the  development  of  such  -soci- 
eties as  the  Brahma  Samaj  and  the  Aryan  Sa- 
maj,  which,  though  they  are  strictly  Hindoo — * 
that  is,  in  no  way  connected  with  the  Church — ^ 
are  yet  believing  in  a  Grod  and  preaching  a  doc- 
trine that  seem  to  be  learned  more  from  the 
Bible  than  from  any  other  source." 

I  began  looking  up  the  matter,  and  I  was 
not  surprised  to  find  that  the  Brahma  Samaj 
is  a  theistic  communion  which  owes  its  origin 
to  Baja  Eam  Mohan  Eai,  who  was  bom  in  the 
district  of  Bordwan  in  1772.  He  mastered  the 
Sanskrit,  Arabic,  and  Persian  languages  at  an 
early  age,  was  impressed  with  the  fallacies  of 
the  religious  worship  of  his  countrymen,  studied 
the  Hindu  Shastras,  the  Koran,  and  the  Bible, 
gave  up  polytheistic  worship  as  false,  and  at 
first  taught  the  principles  of  monotheism  as 
found  in  the  ancient  Upanishads  of  the  Vedas, 
though  most  likely  influenced  more  by  the  mono- 
theism of  the  Bible. 

In  1816  he  established  a  society  consisting 
only  of  Hindus,  in  which  texts  from  the  Vedas 
were  recited  and  theistic  hymns  were  chanted. 
**In  1830  he  organized  a  society  for  prayer- 
meetings,  which  may  be  considered  as  the  foun- 


NON-CHRISTIAN  SYSTEMS  321 

dation  of  the  present  Brahma  Samaj,"  and  one 
need  not  go  far  to  find  the  exami)le  and  the  in- 
spiration which  led  him  to  start  a  prayer-meet- 
ing. While  the  society  at  first  admitted  only 
Hindus,  when  they  dedicated  their  first  build- 
ing, we  are  told  that  ^'it  was  a  place  of  public 
meeting  for  all  sorts  and  descriptions  of  peo- 
ple, without  distinction,  who  shall  behave  in  an 
orderly,  sober,  and  religious  manner." 

Those  who  are  interested  in  the  trust-deed 
of  the  building  will  find  it  under  the  ^*  Brahma 
Samaj''  in  the  ^^Encyclopedia  Britannica," 
where  we  are  told  that  *'the  new  faith  at  this 
period  held  to  the  Vedas  as  its  basis.  The 
founder,  Ram  Mohan  Eai,  soon  after  left  India 
for  England,  where  he  died  in  1835. ' '  The  so- 
ciety maintained  a  bare  existence  till  1841,  when 
Babu  Debendra  Nath  Tagore,  of  Calcutta,  took 
it  up,  gave  it  a  printing-press,  established  a 
paper,  *Ho  which  the  Bengali  language  now 
owes  much  for  its  strength  and  elegance." 
About  the  year  1850  some  of  the  followers  dis- 
covered that  the  greater  part  of  the  Vedas  is 
polytheistic,  and  a  schism  took  place.  **  Be- 
tween 1847  and  1850  branch  societies  were 
formed  in  different  parts  of  India,  especially  in 

21 


322    SOME  BY-PRODUCTS  OF  MISSIONS 

Bengal,  and  the  new  Church  made  rapid  prog- 
ress, * '  says  the  *  ^  Britannica, ' ' '  ^  for  which  it  was 
largely  indebted  to  the  spread  of  English  edu- 
cation and  the  labors  of  the  Christian  mission- 
aries/' 

It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  them  further  in 
their  progress  except  to  say  that  later,  about 
1860,  the  younger  Brahmans,  headed  by  Babu 
Kesab  Chandra  Sen,  tried  to  carry  their  reli- 
gious theories  into  practice  by  excluding  all 
idolatrous  rites  from  their  social  and  domestic 
ceremonies,  and  by  rejecting  the  distinction  of 
caste  alto g ether.''  This  was  a  definite  charac- 
teristic of  the  Church  from  the  beginning;  it 
is  not  improbable  that  it  was  from  this  source 
that  Kesab  Chandra  Sen  got  his  inspiration. 
This  caused  the  schism  to  widen  into  a  ' '  visible 
separation,''  and  the  two  parties  were  known 
thereafter  as  the  progressives  and  the  conserv- 
atives. The  former  have  made  considerable 
progress.  ^^They  have  built  a  church  in  Cal- 
cutta which  is  crowded  every  Sunday  evening, 
and  they  encourage  the  establishment  of  branch 
Samajes  in  different  parts  of  the  countr}^" 

After  the  death  of  Kesab  Chandra  Sen  the 
leadership  of  the  sect  was  taken  up  by  Moo- 


NON-CHRISTIAN  SYSTEMS  323 

zoomdar,  whose  ^* Oriental  Christ"  and  other 
books  on  the  doctrines  of  the  Brahma  Samaj 
are  an  exhibition  of  a  deep  piety  which  only  an 
Oriental — and  I  was  about  to  add,  a  Hindu- 
could  set  forth.  But  not  simply  a  Hindu  of  the 
Hindus,  but  a  Hindu  who  has  been  touched, 
whether  consciously  or  unconsciously,  by  the 
Spirit  of  the  Master. 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Libraries 


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Date  Due 

^  2s  '39 

^ 

